Stanage

Ever since I embarked on my mission to rid our streets of the Nazi parking enforcement officers, I've been feeling stressed out. It wasn't too bad at first but then I read the headline story in "The Star" and on Sunday morning two police officers appeared at our front door making "house to house enquiries". Shirley spoke to them and of course claimed no knowledge of the missing stormtroopers' whereabouts even though they were languishing in our underhouse - little more than ten feet from our doorstep.

How did that Queen song go? "Pressure pushing down on me". Now I know exactly how Freddie Mercury felt. I had to get out, get some fresh air, clear the cobwebs away. I took a couple of buckets of water down to our now smelly underhouse where the captives were all sprawled lazily on their campbeds then I hastily slammed the door, locked it, went back into the house and grabbed my things ready for a constitutional walk around Stanage Edge.

Very popular with ramblers and the rock climbing fraternity, Stanage Edge is an escarpment of millstone grit some five miles west of Sheffield. Once it was a source of reliable millstones - hand carved there throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. At this time of year, the wild moorland above it blooms with purple heather as hardy sheep scavenge for late summer grasses, fattening themselves before those bitter winds of winter blow down from the north.

Guessing that I might make a blogpost about my ramble over Stanage and suspecting that some of you might be becoming disinterested in my recent accounts of urban "pest control", I decided to take the old camera with me. Here are five Stanage Edge pictures for your delectation:-

On the horizon - approaching Stanage Edge from the east

Looking down from Stanage Edge to Understones Farm

Abandoned millstones and the mother rock

Sheep guarding the millstone edge

Moorland scenery above Stanage