St. Sunday's Beck with a mystery

 Sunday 6th October 2024

!!!!!   *****. !!!!!

I have just spent two hours trying to upload these photos. Blogger has introduced a new interface to upload photos which just adds another step for no purpose that I can see. On top of that my camera has been uploading photos in reverse chronology and there seems to have been some collusion between my camera and the Mac, and the latter seems to be trying to do the same. These two animated bits of tech have formed an alliance to upset me.I do know how to fix how folders are listed  but I ended up  with my brain frazzled. At last I can now start writing this post.

Since changing to Memory Map for the Mac I now have 2024 OS mapping. A new symbol I hadn't seen before appeared on the new map, not far from home - more of that later, except that it provided an objective for a walk. I could have persisted and identified the symbol but it seemed like more fun to go and find out what it was on the ground.

St Sunday's beck from Halfpenny (see map below) is a delight that I have previously walked, but there is often something one has missed, Today it was a substantially stone built ornate tower in a field in the middle of nowhere. The map shows this as "Syphon Well," and it is part of the massive engineering feet of constructing a 63 mile gravity fed water pipe from Haweswater to Manchester between 1935 and 1941. There is a relatively concise account HERE which is worth a read. If you Google "Syphon well" you will find technical details of its working.

At my furthest point north Blease Hall features. There is much on the Internet about its architectural features and internal fixtures but I was taken by this little bit of tittle tattle:

 

hearsay:-	Built by Roger Bateman, cloth manufacturer, 1600. The house has a dobbie stone, a charm against spirits.
ghost story:-	The daughter of the family living in an earlier house on this site died of sorrow when her lover failed to return from the Crusades, 13th century. Her ghostly funeral procession is seen passing, now and then.

I was now nearing my mystery objective a bit further south. It was in an enclosed field. However I could see nothing because as I followed the northern edge on a track Pease Beck lay sunken in between with trees and undergrowth on each bank completely restricting any view into the field. After a few hundred yards I turned right over Blaystone Bridge now following the eastern boundary on a tarmac road. Views were still totally restricted by high trees and hedge. Eventually after another couple of hundred yards I found the entrance to the field revealing its confinement of a massive solar panel installation. The field measures quarter of a mile in length on the map and it is filled with the installation. I couldn't get  a photo showing the full extent.

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I plodded back to Blaystone Bridge to follow my plotted route. I was able to divert to the summit shown as spot height 117. on the map from where I took s better photo, but it still didn't convey the full extent.

I descended to Greaves farm from where I had intended to follow the footpath to Ellenwray but the path was blocked by a  chained gate also elaborately tied with blue bailing twine. The gate overhung towards me. I tried to climb it but had a premonition of disaster and broken bones so I bailed out back to the road. Further road walking and tracks had me back to Halfpenny after a jolly present 5.5miles walk.

Setting off from Halfpenny

St. Sunday beck along line of trees

Syphon well

Blease Hall

Steep descent to buried, rotten stile.

First sighting of mystery symbol, and below.

This and below taken from higher vantage point

Note orange dog poo bag - WHY?