Potery In Motion

After a bit of a lay-off from the walking due to various family stuff and some writing stuff, Superdawg pointed out, whilst taking a break from chewing the cat, that we hadn’t been doing a vast amount of nice walkies recently.

So, pausing only to pick up essentials, such as butties, coffee, a banana and a poet, we set off for Westgate for a brief encounter with all of the interesting stuff in Slitt Wood.

Most of these interesting things will be well known to regular pieblog readers, but just to repeat information given in previous postings from my apparent obsession with the Slitt Vein, the main things are these:

An old mill/fortified house with wheel pit

Lots of nice waterfalls and pools

Wild flowers

A lead mine with Bargain steads, wheel pit, mountings for an Armstrong Hydraulic Engine, an excavated smithy with rock drill testing/proving holes, a damn great shaft, the Slitt vein itself

A tramway

A bench with in memorium leather boots with wooden soles

A wet level

Spoil heaps

A reservoir

Some meadows

Nice views.

All in all, quite a lot squeezed in to a couple of miles.

It rained a bit. Jules the pote pointed at things whilst having his photo taken, and wrote at least one poem (he knocks them out like a Birmingham car factory). We paddled up the wet level till we got scared, wearing the Bareskin booties (not wanting to get wet socks). Bruno stuck his tongue out and made rude signs at a small herd or gang of cattle doing some cud-chewing on the other side of the beck (they didn;t seem too bothered) and we collected a few pretty stones.

Later, we crossed the beck and slithered up a lane trashed into deep ruts by 4WD drivers.

And then we went home.

I think we did about four miles.