Not being a close follower of heritage railways, I wasn’t aware that one passes through Bury. My last visit in 2023 didn’t bring me especially close to the route, but this year I had only been in the town a short while when I heard the distinct sound of a steam locomotive and spotted pillars of smoke puffing into the air not far from my hotel.
It was later in the evening when we all met up at a pub called the Trackside Bar that the railway became properly apparent. There were a lot of people there all dressed up to the nines; tuxedos, ballgowns, tiaras, the works. And outside the bar, which is an old railway station building, was the platform where a large steam locomotive stood, attached to a train of vintage carriages. After a while the poshly-dressed people boarded the train and it exited the station.
The following morning after breakfast, I decided to re-visit the station – a stop on the East Lancashire Railway heritage line – and was able to take the following pictures. I was with someone else from the group visiting Arcade Club, so didn’t take as many pictures as I might have had I been there alone, but the one’s I got are quite nice.
Last month I visited Bury in Lancashire. The trip was to meet up with a bunch of folks I know from online interactions and visit Arcade Club, a videogame arcade with hundreds of games, all free to play once you pay the entrance fee. It’s the second time we’ve done this – the first being so much fun that it’s probably going to become an annual event from now on. Most of the people in our group were middle aged blokes who’ve grown up with a love of videogames dating back, in some cases, to the 1970s.
Last year I just traveled there for the day, but on hearing of the pub and curry evening that some of the others had enjoyed, this year I traveled across the day before the Arcade Club meet so I could get in on the curry this time. Next year I think I’ll stay the following evening too as Arcade Club is open until 11pm and I was told by those who stayed that it became much less crowded in the evening (there were lots of kids having parties and stuff earlier in the day) and it became a lot easier to get on all the machines, especially the linked up racing games and similar competitive machines.
Despite being at Arcade Club all day, I took no photos other than a few snaps on my phone, but I did take a few pictures, including the couple of rather random shots made while walking through Bury town centre, and a bunch of pictures of a steam locomotive that I made the following morning after breakfast (I’ll post those tomorrow).
Anyway, if you live in the UK and enjoy arcades and videogames, Arcade Club is a great place to visit.
The title of today’s post is inspired by the movie, Goodfellas. There’s a scene where Tommy (played by Joe Pesci), accompanied by Jimmy (Robert DeNiro) and Henry (Ray Liotta) go to Tommy’s mother’s house late at night to grab a shovel so they can dispose of the body that’s in the boot of their car. While there, they wake Tommy’s mother (the movie’s director, Martin Scorcese’s mother, Catherine) who then proceeds to feed them all. While there she shows them a portrait she’s painted of a man in a boat with two dogs, both facing opposite directions. Tommy comments “I like this one. One dog goes one way, and the other dog goes the other way.“.
The painting is actually based on a photograph of a man named John Weaving, who was featured in a 1978 issue of National Geographic. There’s an interesting post about the scene here.
When I first saw the picture I’ve published in today’s post, I immediately thought of the scene from Goodfellas.
This year (and hopefully more to come) I’m planning on taking a bunch of walks / hikes with a camera. This is not a particularly new idea – I do this all the time already – but my methodology previously has been more based on random choice. Not quite stick a pin in a map, but certainly unguided insofar as points of interest on the walks I chose. Some of these self-directed walks were good and there were plenty of things to see along the way (and it’s always great when you come around a corner to find an interesting scene before you). But I’ve also been conscious that I might have been missing out on stuff that I would have seen if I’d only gone by a different route.
So the hikes I’m undertaking this year are based on guidebooks, or the recommended walks that can be found in the Ordnance Survey (OS) app that I subscribe to. Some of the walks are quite short – just a few miles – while others are longer, although none are too taxing, and nothing that can’t be achieved within the course of a day out.
I’ve also started to purchase some equipment for these outings. I’ve discovered how uncomfortable the wrong clothing can be in the right conditions. I want to be able to keep warm or cool as appropriate, and be able to stay dry in the UK’s changeable weather, so I’ve been investing in some proper outdoor clothing – base-layers, mid-layers, waterproof shells and the like. I’ll probably have to buy more stuff as the conditions change through the year, but at the end I should have a wardrobe of clothing to suit most conditions that I’ll encounter. I’ve also bought a pair of hiking poles. I wondered if these might have been overkill, but the first time I used them they were a godsend.
One thing I want to buy is a good quality backpack. Not necessarily a photography backpack, but one that will serve that purpose as well as giving me space to carry other provisions. Until then I’ll make do with the backpack I already own.
Anyway, this has been a somewhat lengthy preamble. TLDR – I’m going to go for some walks, take pictures along the way, and write about it here. 🙂
The initial hike I chose is the first walk in my OS Peak District Outstanding Circular Walks book: Eyam and Stoney Middleton.
This first walk sits in the “short walks” category of the book, with hikes of less than 2.5 hours (although I don’t think they accounted for photography in those timings 🙂 ). It’s only 3.5 miles, with a height gain of 660 feet (although, to be fair, that gain is pretty much all in one leg-busting uphill section).
The day of the hike was typically British overcast weather. This isn’t the sort of day that inspires photography to be honest, but I’ve also decided hereon that I will make the best of the conditions I have rather than take my usual approach of moaning about it, so it was on this damp and grey day that I arrived in the village of Eyam to begin my walk.
There is evidence of human settlement at Eyam dating back to the Ancient Britons but it was in the 17th century that the village gained fame. In 1666 the Great Plague of London, an outbreak of Bubonic Plague, took place. During the outbreak a bolt of cloth containing infected fleas was delivered to the tailor in Eyam, resulting in a local outbreak of the disease. Although there is some debate about the numbers affected, nearly three hundred villagers are recorded as having lost their lives as a result. A number of measures were introduced by the village to attempt to halt the spread, including a requirement that families isolate and bury their own deceased members. The most important however, was likely the decision to quarantine the entire village to prevent outside transmission. It is this sacrifice that give Eyam its fame.
I began my walk down Church Street, the main road through the village. It’s lined with houses in a variety of styles, from stone built cottages, through to the grand looking Eyam Hall, which now serves as a wedding venue.
A map, an information board, and a set of stocks sit just to the right of frame in the image above.
Eyam Hall probably looks nicer in good light, but it’s still an impressive presence on a dull day.
A village shop is present and doing business, but what I assume to be the post office was closed.
The door to the Mechanic’s Institute was open and there was some activities taking place inside (although not mechanics, I don’t think).
Further down the village I reached the point where I would take a right onto Lydgate and head along the footpath that leads to the neighbouring village of Stoney Middleton.
The footpath was a little muddy on the day, and I was glad of my hiking boots, but it was easy to traverse. Not far out of Eyam I could see the ruin of a farmhouse in the middle of a field.
A little further along the track sits the Boundary Stone. This boulder was used to exchange money for goods between the villages of Eyam and Stoney Middleton. There are a number of holes in the top of the stone and these were filled with vinegar in order to sterilise the money.
There are a number of information boards present along this footpath, denoted as the Stoney Middleton Heritage Trail, which contain interesting facts along with some tragic stories.
As the footpath crests the ridge before a steep descent to Stoney Middleton, a tree had fallen. It’s surprising how little of a tree’s structure is underground sometimes, and this one had it’s work cut out to find purchase for so long in the stony soil.
I’ll end this first part of the post with a picture of the path down into Stoney Middleton, which you can just see emerging from the murky day at the bottom.
From the footbridge across the railway line, the space outside the scrapyard can look a little like a lunar landscape, or a cratered battlefield. It’s very much an industrial space with a scattering of industrial skips and a gritty, oily surface with a scent of oil and chemicals. Beyond it is a second railway bridge that leads to the northern end of Rother Valley Country Park, and there is a footpath that skirts the edge of the scrapyard and this open area (or, as the figure in the first picture is doing, you can just cut the corner).
It’s not a pretty place, but there are photographs to be had. The skips catch the light and, when the angle is right, can be contrasty subjects with interesting shadows.
The puddles, when it has been raining, also offer opportunities to find reflections of the objects present and the surrounding structures.
I took the following two pictures while walking to Woodhouse Washlands where I shot the photos that I’ve shared here during the past week.
The first bridge crosses the railway line that comes from Sheffield, via Darnall and Woodhouse, towards Chesterfield and onward destinations. A scrapyard sits just at the other side of the bridge, along with footpaths to Rotherham Road, Rother Valley Country Park, plus some other trails through the floodplain.
Just to the right of the the bridge is a somewhat pointless bike gate. That aint stopping anyone!
The second is of the railway bridge which carries the stretch of track running between Rotherham and Chersterfield across the River Rother (from which Rotherham takes its name, translating from the Old English Homestead on the Rother). This line joins the line crossed by the footbridge pictured above a little further south. It’s not obvious from the picture, but the river bank in the foreground was quite slick and muddy!
From here I followed the course of the river downstream through the section of floodplain that lies south of the Mosborough Bypass (which marks the southern edge of Woodhouse Washlands). Before the bypass, I had to cross Ochre Dyke and Rotherham Road. The dyke is spanned by a small bridge. Or it normally is…
On this day I found that the bridge had been removed and the foundations for a replacement were now in evidence. The water looked jumpable, but I thought it might be prudent to walk around. Unfortunately, following a lot of rainfall, the route was blocked by swampy, submerged grass, and I would have had to make a significant backtrack to get around. So I decided to risk the jump after all.
Despite not looking too bad, it was quite a hard landing on the far bank, resulting in a muddy knee, a hand prickled on a bramble, and a pain in the joint just above my knee that has flared up on occasion ever since. I’m no longer young, it seems…
I went to the cinema a few weeks back (to see Dune Part II, I think it was). In one of the car-parks at the shopping mall where the cinema resides, was a circus. The sky was heavy with dark cloud, but the sun was shining through and illuminating things nicely. I’m glad I had the XA3 in my pocket.
After yesterday’s post about West Burton power station, here’s one about Cottam power station, which also stands beside the Trent a few miles upstream to the south.
Cottam power station went into operation in 1968, generation power for fifty years (20 years longer that it’s original life expectancy). It ceased generation in 2019 and demolition began in 202/ The chimney and cooling towers are due to be demolished by 2025.
Some of the buildings in these pictures were demolished just a few days after I photographed them on the 22 February 2024. I expect the views of, and from, the village of Cottam will look considerably different when the demolition work is complete.
Steel City Snapper photography 