A bus ride from the centre of Sheffield
Jun. 14th, 2011 03:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rydra_wong posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
common_natureLast week, I spent five days bouldering on the gritstone in the Peak District. Here are some photos taken on my crappy little phone camera.
They have a lot of sky up there.
[Boulder against bright blue sky with fluffy clouds.]
Being from the inner city, I am easily impressed by horizons:
[An earth and gravel track with more sky and somewhat more ominous clouds above it.]
Also, by plants:
[Roadside plants: ferns, dockleaves and tiny blue forget-me-nots.]
Geographical context:
[Road sign showing directions to Sheffield, Grindleford and Bakewell.]
I was climbing in the Burbage Valley:
[View across valley showing Carl Wark and Higgar Tor.]
Tradition says that Carl Wark (in the centre of the photo) is an Iron Age fortress; archeological speculation is that it may be much older.
These are some of the boulders where I did most of my climbing, in front of the gritstone edge on the other side:
[Boulders including "The Tank".]
More rock porn:
[Boulders against a bright blue sky.]
[The boulder known as the Brick.]
The gritstone is a type of sandstone mixed with quartz and feldspar crystals; I tried but failed to capture the way it glitters in bright sunlight:
[Low rocks, not visibly glittering.]
Because of its fantastic friction (the reason why climbers love it), it was used to make millstones for grinding grain, which is why it's known to geologists as Millstone grit:
[Abandoned millstone with ferns and low plants growing around it.]
During WWII, soldiers were stationed here, and some of them used the boulders for target practice; holds on some bouldering problems are the pockmarks left by the bullets:
[Bullet marks on the Pock Block.]
This is entirely natural -- it's a gritstone tor called Mother Cap:
[Mother Cap, a tor with diagonal layers of rock piled on top of each other.]
The yellow thing is my bouldering mat, which is not nearly as small as it looks there. Despite how small it looks when you're a long way above it.
It being June, there were lambs around, many with their baby horns:
[Sheep and lamb.]
[Sheep and lamb, which may or may not be the previous sheep and lamb.]
The sheep were surprisingly hard to photograph until I discovered that my rainproof poncho made me magically Less Alarming To Sheep.
I am not including a photo of the poncho.
Did I mention the rocks?
[Rocks and sky on a hilltop, either Carl Wark or Higgar Tor.]
And the sky?
[Huge sky, streaked with lines of cloud.]
And that was what I did on my summer holiday, by Rydra Wong aged 36 and 3/4.
[Dark landscape, either early morning or late evening, silhouetted against cloudy sky.]
They have a lot of sky up there.
[Boulder against bright blue sky with fluffy clouds.]
Being from the inner city, I am easily impressed by horizons:
[An earth and gravel track with more sky and somewhat more ominous clouds above it.]
Also, by plants:
[Roadside plants: ferns, dockleaves and tiny blue forget-me-nots.]
Geographical context:
[Road sign showing directions to Sheffield, Grindleford and Bakewell.]
I was climbing in the Burbage Valley:
[View across valley showing Carl Wark and Higgar Tor.]
Tradition says that Carl Wark (in the centre of the photo) is an Iron Age fortress; archeological speculation is that it may be much older.
These are some of the boulders where I did most of my climbing, in front of the gritstone edge on the other side:
[Boulders including "The Tank".]
More rock porn:
[Boulders against a bright blue sky.]
[The boulder known as the Brick.]
The gritstone is a type of sandstone mixed with quartz and feldspar crystals; I tried but failed to capture the way it glitters in bright sunlight:
[Low rocks, not visibly glittering.]
Because of its fantastic friction (the reason why climbers love it), it was used to make millstones for grinding grain, which is why it's known to geologists as Millstone grit:
[Abandoned millstone with ferns and low plants growing around it.]
During WWII, soldiers were stationed here, and some of them used the boulders for target practice; holds on some bouldering problems are the pockmarks left by the bullets:
[Bullet marks on the Pock Block.]
This is entirely natural -- it's a gritstone tor called Mother Cap:
[Mother Cap, a tor with diagonal layers of rock piled on top of each other.]
The yellow thing is my bouldering mat, which is not nearly as small as it looks there. Despite how small it looks when you're a long way above it.
It being June, there were lambs around, many with their baby horns:
[Sheep and lamb.]
[Sheep and lamb, which may or may not be the previous sheep and lamb.]
The sheep were surprisingly hard to photograph until I discovered that my rainproof poncho made me magically Less Alarming To Sheep.
I am not including a photo of the poncho.
Did I mention the rocks?
[Rocks and sky on a hilltop, either Carl Wark or Higgar Tor.]
And the sky?
[Huge sky, streaked with lines of cloud.]
And that was what I did on my summer holiday, by Rydra Wong aged 36 and 3/4.
[Dark landscape, either early morning or late evening, silhouetted against cloudy sky.]
