Upper
Goyt Valley
The moors around the A537
road to Buxton, beyond the Cat and Fiddle pub, are the headwaters
of the rivers Dane and Goyt. The Dane flows south through Congleton
then west and north joining the Weaver and emptying into the Mersey
Estuary at Runcorn. While the Goyt flows north and joins with
the Tame at Stockport to become the Mersey.
The Cat and Fiddle is the
second highest pub in England and has extensive views westward
over Cheshire to North Wales, weather permitting.
Today haze was restricting
the most distant views, as it unfortunately does all too frequently
- visual as well as atmospheric pollution. The nearer scenery
was still sufficiently clear with Shutlingsloe on the left of
picture and on the farther hill in the centre the telecoms tower
on Sutton Common. Bottom right are the buildings that once housed
a restaurant called the Dish and Spoon, continuing the local theme.
I have a vague recollection of hearing that the motto of a family
was corrupted into Cat and Fiddle - something like 'Corton Fidelis'
- if anybody knows I would be pleased to hear.
Parking in the lay-by, in
shorts and trekking sandals in expectation of a hot day we take
the unsurfaced old road northward passing this milestone which
reads 'To London 179 miles'.
Over the stile and onto
the path across the moor and down into the Goyt valley, here looking
across to Burbage Edge.
The patterns of land usage
and colours of vegetation make interesting kaleidoscopes, from
the bare slopes of shale along the cloughs; the dark patches of
bare earth burned off to encourage fresh new growth of the bilberries
that the grouse feed off; the dark green of the forest trees;
the bright green of bracken; and the tossing silvery pink heads
of grass at our feet, here, with white speckles of cotton grass
among.
Drystone walls hereabouts
tend to be of quarried sandstone. Unless this stone is softer
and hence more weathered, it appears, with its rounded edges and
irregular shapes, to be field stone not quarried and its rough
surface texture indicating gritstone not the more common sandstone.
Signpost in Deep Clough
above Goytsclough Quarry with ever deepening banks of bracken.
Almost down to the crossing
of the Goyt now ...
... and a fine crop of thistles
(Scottish? or Spear?) alongside the track.
The packhorse bridge over
the infant Goyt, relocated here in 1967 from the hamlet of Goyt's
Bridge lower down the valley when ...
... the Errwood Reservoir
was constructed and the hamlet flooded.
Some two hundred or more
years before, these drystone walls were constructed as the common
land became enclosed by the local gentry. The structure here is
clear to see with a batter to both faces and vertical capstones.
The stones here are quarried sandstone with comparatively sharp
edges to the shape of a fat tile. Compare with the random shapes
and round edges on the earlier pictured wall (above). Pickfords,
the international removals company, is reputed to have started
life in this valley carrying quarried stone by packhorse for road
(and wall?) construction and bringing other materials by return
journey.
Looking west across the
head of the reservoir towards the site of the now ruined Errwood
Hall on the wooded knoll just below the horizon and midway between
the road bridge and the car-park.
Continued
in Part II
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