Millstones at Stanage
I read somewhere, maybe Hal Higdon’s marathon training guide, that you should be prepared to go out and train whatever the weather. I’ve generally stuck to this principle, but now that my runs are getting beyond 2 hours it is asking a bit more. Nevertheless, since I don’t know what the Peak District weather will throw at me in September for the Nine Edges event, I’ve committed to “no excuses” training.
And so I came to be running around the bleak Hallam Moor in a steadily worsening downpour. Not so much down, as sideways. The only tarmac section on this run is a quiet lane called Rod Side, which runs parallel to the A57. The rain is fired at me from the west, into my face. I shuffled along with my head down and my shoulder into the wind. If I crouched behind a building and waited for the rain to pass I would have got even colder and I could have been waiting a very long time, so I carried on.
Once I turned south and onto Stanage Edge at least I could look up again. The top of the edge is pocked with numbered bowls carved into the gritstone. Apparently chipped out to provide drinking water for the grouse on the moor, and numbered to make sure that the stonemasons were correctly paid for their work. Some, on sloping slabs, have sophisticated channels radiating from the bowl to maximise their water collection.
Grouse Facility
Earlier on in this anti-clockwise route I passed the Redmires reservoirs. Close to the reservoirs there are extensive lumps and grooves in the ground, which are the remnants of trenches dug by the Sheffield City Battalion during their training in World War One. Two thirds of the men lost their lives in the Battle of the Somme.
Aerial View of Redmires
