Trigger Warning – Photos
We three ‘musketeers’ sat at Bar Brook the other night still discussing the detail that has come out of phone ping analysis of visitation in the Peak District (have a look at the amazing ‘Landscape Observatory’ website) when one us said ‘i think it’s been quieter on the Eastern Moors this year …. I bet we haven’t attended 100 fires’ ….
We are a very very small Team doing evenings and nights on the Eastern Moors. Usually 2 or 3 of us. Mostly volunteers. We have no recording app and we’re usually dashing from one incident to the next and end up forgetting some of what we do.
…. and so it was that we spent the next 3 hours handwriting details down from whatsapp group messages, phone photo albums, SMS’s and instagram about incidents we have attended this year.
It was like looking at holiday snaps of memories from years ago, but they are all incidents from this year. Sadder still was our ability to see a photo of a corner of a car in the dark, or of a shoe next to a BBQ or a distant photo of a tent and be able to recount all the detail of the incident.
Upon recollection some of the incidents still appalled us, some of them entertained us, some of them we wondered if the police ever charged anyone.
Anyway, the bear has been prodded now and i’ll make some bar charts in crayon. The recent data from the Landscape Observatory showed the Eastern Moors to be the second most visited area of the National Park, and also the Burbage Valley to be the second most visited for Strava users. What these hand scribbled notes show is the next layers of detail of the negative aspects of all that visitation. A lot of stuff goes on ‘in the Park after Dark’ !!!
‘Karen’. The bag of dead dogs. Fire after fire after fire after fire. Flytipping. Damage to the landscape. Livestock attacks. Bin bags of human waste. BBQ after BBQ after BBQ after BBQ. Sex dolls. Beheaded stags. Bollock naked ‘fight me’ man. Tons of cannabis waste. ‘Kevin’. I’ll stop there.
Maybe i’ll do a ‘Year Ont’ Moors’ illustrated talk about the funny, sad, horrible and downright appalling ones. And Karen. And Kevin. Of course.
Doubtless the numbers will increase this weekend …