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.
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2 comments:
"he knocks them out like a Birmingham car factory" - so he down pens frequently and the finished ones fall apart after a couple of years?
I just googled for 'bargain steads' and got pointed back to a pie blog from last February. You could probably start your own language like that.
Just how big is this damned great shaft?
Some pomes are of better quality than others, Tony.
Bargain Steads may be a local name. The "bargain" is the deal whereby they agree the price of the ore and the stead is the bay.
The shaft is ecky-thump deepness... something like 300 feet. A caving club was sent down to investigate and they found that it had collapsed 95 feet down, so rather than jump up and down on it to see if it would get any deeper, they went to the Hare and Hounds.
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