![\"http:\/\/www.geograph.org.uk\/photo\/1093601\"](\"http:\/\/all-geo.org\/metageologist\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/picture-of-road.jpg\")
<\/a>The new Buxton road winds below Shining Tor. \u00a9 Copyright Jonathan Wakefield<\/a> and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n Roads in Derbyshire’s ‘White Peak’ are shaped by the limestone beneath; they sit in the bottom of ‘dales’ – steep gorges etched into rock – or wind\u00a0across a bucolic landscape of green fields tessellated by white stone walls.\u00a0But drive out of Buxton\u00a0on the Macclesfield (“Cat and Fiddle”1<\/a>) road and you suddenly enter a wilder world. Within a few feet, the stone walls at the side of the road turn from pale grey to a buff beige. \u00a0The landscape is brown and open, empty under a sky that is rarely entirely blue, mantled by peat bog and growing little but heather. You are entering one of the ‘Dark Peak’, one of the wild moors of northern England, the wuthering heights where Heathcliff roamed and Ted Hughes’ hawk roosts.<\/p>\n Further west, at the edge of the moors\u00a0everything changes again – the Cheshire Plain appears laid out for inspection. On a clear day – or better still night – the view takes the breath away. The homes and lights of 3 million people twinkle and beguile. The depth of detail invites you to study, to pick out Jodrell Bank, flights descending into Manchester airport, Alderley Edge….<\/p>\n The Buxton road climbs up out of Macclesfield. Taken near Toll Bar Avenue.<\/p><\/div>\n Drivers shouldn’t enjoy the spectacle: this road needs your full attention. It’s\u00a0popular with motorcyclists for its many bends. Sadly some are total idiots, making the\u00a0A537 one of Britain’s most dangerous roads. Their attitude to the area is not much different from many other modern travellers\u00a0– this is a place to enjoy yourself in. Older generations – those who made this and other routes – had other motivations.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Some old routes over the high moors of northern England are know as\u00a0the Saltways. The ‘wiches’ of Cheshire: Nantwich, Northwich and Middlewich, are towns based on salt. Thick layers sit deep within the Cheshire Basin, formed as a shallow sea was repeatedly evaporated under the\u00a0Permian desert sun.<\/p>\n Salt has been produced in Cheshire since at least Roman times. An important commodity essential to food preservation (cheese! bacon!) it was transported across the country by salt traders (“salters”) who name attached to their routes. Below is my inference as to the route taken by salters through this area, passing through\u00a0Saltersford Hall.<\/p>\n Trace of Salters way in green. Macclesfield is the town on the left, Buxton on the right. The brown area in the middle is the moor<\/p><\/div>\n Buxton was a Roman town \u00a0and a direct line from the salt towns to there passes this way, but there is not good evidence it is that old. These routes are pre-industrial though, used by men and horses walking through the landscape, at the mercy of the elements. A reminder of how perilous this could be – hard to remember when speeding in a warm car – comes from an odd memorial stone on the route, that reads: “Here John Turner was cast away in a heavy snow storm in the night in or about the \u00a0year 1755. The print of a womans shoe was found by his side in the snow where he lay dead”<\/p>\n The front of the memorial stone. Source<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n Even as\u00a0John Turner grew cold in the snow, \u00a0the epoch-making2<\/a> Industrial Revolution was hotting up. Using new technology to centralise production in factories only make sense if you can then get your goods to the people who buy\u00a0them – new forms of transport were\u00a0an important factor.<\/p>\n The 18th\u00a0Century – early on in the Industrial Revolution –\u00a0innovation came in the form\u00a0of many new\u00a0roads, called turnpikes.\u00a0<\/strong>These were independently financed toll roads, sanctioned by Acts of Parliament.<\/p>\n The first Macclesfield-Buxton toll road followed an old route, was \u2018engineered by a blind man, John Metcalfe\u2019, and opened in 1759. Initially controversial, it was opposed by some (local coal producers) but championed by the new industrialists.<\/p>\n Old Buxton road in blue, new road in red. Route over Shining Tor in brown.<\/p><\/div>\n This road and the salters way are both direct but steep. This is ideal when moving goods with pack horses, but horse-drawn wagons work better with more gradual slopes, even if the route is longer.\u00a0By the dawn of the 19th Century, new road-building techniques had emerged that cut into the hillside to make wider carriage-ways that avoided steep slopes even over hilly terrain.<\/p>\n New and old Buxton roads converge on\u00a0the far hillside. The Cat and Fiddle pub is on the right hand skyline<\/p><\/div>\n In 1808, a new\u00a0Eddisbury bypass just above Macclesfield was built by the famous engineer Thomas Telford, the “Colossus of Roads”. In 1821 the rest of the Macclesfield-Buxton road was modified with new winding flatter routes and a pub for the weary.\u00a0The new road is wider than the old and climbs more gradually. To achieve this is has many bends, which attract the loonies in leather on their motorcycles.<\/p>\n The transition from White to Dark peak, as you go east from Buxton is dramatic to us, but the incoming darkness would have been felt much more keenly by the Carboniferous inhabitants. The sparkling tropical seas where trilobites frolicked in crinoid forests were suddenly snuffed out by the arrival of massive amounts of sand and mud. Rocks made from\u00a0the remains of life are replaced by those where fossils have to be sought out – traces in sand, crushed shells in rare marine muds or eventually, coal.<\/p>\n The most modern path across the Peak is also the most ancient. Walking across these hills for pleasure is extremely popular and paths easily cut\u00a0into the soft\u00a0peat. The most popular routes are now paved with\u00a0big slabs of the local sandstone – along Shining Tor there are hundreds of them. Covered in ripples and the traces of burrowing bivalves, walking along these makes you feel like you are on\u00a0a sandy shore 300 million years ago.<\/p>\n Slabs of sandstone along Shining Tor<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n Ancient ripples<\/p><\/div>\n “Lockeia” – traces of burrows from bivalves<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Driving west across the edge of the English Peak District is a good way to see\u00a0how geology shapes landscape. Tracing the routes that cross it – feeling their shapes with a finger on a map or with your body as … Continue reading <\/a>Early trade-routes<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/a>\u00a0The modern age approaches<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/a>A new ancient road<\/h2>\n
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