manchester tourist guide regional sightseeing
Thursday, 24th July 2003
Room at the Top - The Moors'Moors are a stage for the performance of Heaven, any audience is incidental,' Ted Hughes.
The Pennine Hills surround Manchester on three sides, at their closest a mere 10 miles (16 km) away. Most of these upland areas are characterised by the vast spaces of the moors, often forming a series of plateaux wide open to all that the elements can throw at them. Often the plateaux break and crash into deep ravines and dells, where scrub woodland fights a hard fight with ferns and nettles. The edges of the heights themselves are frayed into crags such as those at Cown Edge Rocks near Glossop or the pithily named Windgather Rocks at Kettleshulme. In fine weather the moors are beautiful and dramatic, mingling fresh air with long views and sheep. On some days a total silence seems to descend, broken only by skylarks or a gentle breeze whispering through the coarse grass. On several of the moors to the east of the city the heather burns purple in late summer.
But there is something ambiguous about the moors too. If there is beauty here it is imperfect. This is no Alpine idyll or lowland English pleasantry. In bad weather there is a dark primaeval quality which has fascinated writers for centuries, it's as if the moors have their own personality: one traumatised by the human abuse of deforestation, quarrying and industry. Emily Bronte understood this well in Wuthering Heights set on the Haworth Moors 25 miles north east of the city. So did Ted Hughes who captured the raw, hard beauty of the hills in Remains of Elmet (Faber), from which the introductory quotation to this description comes.
Of course, the name moors is tarnished in Manchester with the word murderer. Saddleworth Moor was the chosen location for Ian Brady and Myra Hindley when they buried their child victims in the '60s. One body remains lost up there. As do others from other times. In the deep peat pleats around Kinder, Bleaklow and Black Hill lie the scattered wreckage of a large number of planes including Spitfires, Lancasters, several US Liberators and a Superfortress.
Sometimes it feels appropriate that a common bird call up here is the cry of the curlew: if all that is cold and sinister about the moors could be caught in one sound it is that of the curlew. Yet similarly all that is bright and fresh about the moors is contained in the twitter of the skylark. The moors are about extremes.
If there is time, every visitor should take the opportunity to claim their own bit of the southern Pennines. Links within ManchesterOnline
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