On this day in the year of our Lord 2017 a crack team stepped off the train in Hathersae bound for the high alpine crags of Stanage Edge. If my memory serves me right we’d intended on getting some meagre rations to sustain ourselves overnight in Robin Hoods Cave … but whilst crossing the street we were persuaded otherwise by the delicious smell coming from Maazi’s.
And so it was that the three of them carted a meal for at least four up to Stanage and down in to the cave. Beverages were had. Exotic flavours were sampled. Poses were posed and the sunset was watched.
The film that Al made has been watched >21k times (type ‘curry in a cave’ in to Youtube). The sausages that Gordon made for brekkie were 👌.
Where do the years go ? Don’t we three look young and full of life !! And how have Al and Gordon now got flowing long locks of hair and i’ve got less thatch than a ring ouzels nest ?
More importantly, what are we doing for the 10 year anniversary …. ?
Some thoughts, words and pictures around my minor involvement in fighting the wildfire that impacted the Featherbed Moss area of the Dark Peak.
Geography
The fire impacted the area of the Peak District between Kinder and Bleaklow (and South of the A57 road) bounded by
A57 Snake Pass to the North
Snake Plantations to the East
Ashop Clough to the South
Pennine Way to the West
Rough area – NOT 100% ACCURATE We measured the perimeter of the fire site with a drone on Saturday evening – NOT official figure
Origins
Derbyshire Fire and Rescue Service received a 999 call at 2058hrs on Thursday 30th April. Gamekeepers were on scene at 2100hrs. I believe the ignition site to have been in the area marked on the OS map between Nether Gate Clough and Snake Plantations.
Although there is a significant amount of rubbish from campers strewn along the woodland edge, i don’t believe a source was identified. It would be an odd place to camp (the area in Snake Plantation alongside the beck is the the most popular site for ‘wild’ campers in the Peak. It is an area lauded on social media by people parking at Birchin Clough that have left an absolute shithole in the woodland littered with abandoned tents, firepits and human waste.
says it all really …
But that area is well below the area where the fire started.
A word about the Peak District National Park Fire Operations Group aka FOG
The PDNP Fire Operations Group was formed in 1996 after a serious moorland blaze. It brings together a partnership of six fire services (Cheshire, Derbyshire, Greater Manchester, Staffordshire, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire), National Park rangers, National Trust wardens, water companies, major landowners and gamekeepers to draw up fire plans, oversee specialist fire-fighting equipment, raise awareness of moorland fires and the consequences thereof and train for emergencies.
Thursday Night
Elements of the FOG deloyed to Snake Woodland via the vehicle access gate that leads to Saukin Ridge. Thermal drones piloted by keepers, Derbyshire MRT and Eastern Moors Partnership (EMP) rangers were used to assess the situation. The decision was made (by the FRS who have primacy at a wildfire) to not attempt to fight the fire in the dark of the first night.
Friday
By daybreak the smoke could be seen from Manchester and Sheffield. The A57 was closed to traffic. An enormous FOG effort was launched across an enormous swathe of moorland to get a grip of the fire. There was a significant amount of resources, logisitics, FOG partner vehicles, water dumps, welfare facilities and an Incident Control Centre at the top of Snake Pass.
In simple terms, what has burnt has burnt and therefore the effort is put in to the edges of the fire and stopping the spread. The area of the fire had been split in to 4 large sectors and FOG crews with beaters, Scoty Packs (portable water backpacks and hoses), ArgoCat and SofTrak vehicles (carrying 300 – 500 litres each) deployed to the fight. The wind didn’t help. The terrain of deeply sloping cloughed peat moorland made access difficult and time consuming.
On the western edge of the fire the wind and the associated speed of the burn meant that one second you’d be hosing or beating the fire edge and the next all context of space had gone and you were engulfed in smoke. Between daybreak and noon on Friday the fire was spreading quickly.
As the last community to actively start fires on moorland as part of their work in land management, it would only be fair to observe the proficiency of the keepers in attacking the fire line. Many facets of that landscape and weather led to the need of a sort of ‘quick reaction force’ to be acutely aware of the nature of moorland fire and have the mobility and skills to read it and attack. I don’t see eye to eye with keepers on a lot of things but their ability on the fireline was remarkable. Credit where it’s due.
Some point late morning the keepers came up out of Ashop Clough quickly !! noting the wind had changed to a (roughly) southerly – and the fire front tore across the moor in our sector. It was at this point that one of our ArgoCats wouldn’t start. That was an interesting chat 20m from the fire front with a knackered vehicle full of fuel and laden with water. Options discussed included a) run away and leave it b) push it in to one of the leaky dam ponds and come back later c) a circle of people with beaters and scotty packs (and the water hose off the Argo) forming a circle and defending the vehicle ….
conked out but not burnt out 🙏
Keepers appeared out of the dense smoke on their way out of the clough and offered a tow out and as we were prep’ing that the bloody Argo decided to fire up.
The Fire Operations lead from DFRS called a Tactical Withdrawl and we extracted to the road and a brew from the ‘Sally Army’ truck.
(To misquote Thomas Carlyle in his ‘’History of Friedrich the Second, Called Frederick the Great” …. ‘an army of wildfire fighters marches on sarnies and brews’. The non-stop sustenance support by the chapin the Salvation Army welfare truck for the >100 people involved in tackling the wildfire was very very much appreciated by everyone. Thank you 🙏. )
Tea in hand we watched the fire track across the moor and the helicopter attack its progress with underslung water ‘bombs’.
The wind then abated a bit and we refilled the Argo with water, ‘saddled up’ and headed south down in to to the clough.
It was on this foray that we saw a charred and helpless leveret wandering the burnt moor and also a short eared owl calling in distress.
There was operational updates led by the Incident Commander about every 90 minutes with all FOG partners represented. Drone footage (taken by Derbyshire MRT) was used as a highly effective awareness tool (it wasn’t possible from anywhere (other than in the heli) to get a view of the whole site due to the scale.
More work in the clough fighting the fire edge for most of the rest of the shift until 6pm ish. The various crews of on-call firefighters were arriving from across several counties to keep fighting the fight in to the evening.
The four of us from EMP then signed out, loaded the ArgoCats on to trailers and made our way back to our base on Big Moor. We then washed in the sink, ate a pizza and went back out on firewatch on our own turf.
‘Can You’
‘Can You’ is a phrase from the surveillance world whereby something is happening but you’re not in a position or resourced to deal with it so you offer it up to the wider team. There’s no prizes for trying to do everything yourself nor for losing a subject because your ego is too big to share responsibility. As we were heading down the Hope Valley on our way home a mountain rescue colleague messaged to say there was a campfire near the Eagle Stone on Baslow Edge. He had info’d the farmer. I put a ‘Can You’ out. Damian (the BMC Fire Engagement Ranger) made haste there. A Derbyshire FRS crew on their home from the Snake were inbound. Fire extinguished. Engagement chat had. The team works.
The keepers went to a moorland fire above Bradwell on their way home. Another DFRS crew went to a storage container alight in countryside near Hathersage on their way home.
Some of my EMP colleagues out on night firewatch had had about 3hrs kip in about 40 hrs by this point. Safety first. To bed.
Saturday
And so tired bodies made our way to EMP base to prep the vehicles and equipment for the second day before driving through to Snake Summit.
The second full day of the fire resembled some sort of sci-fi film. We traversed the scorched moonscape in Argocat all-terrain vehicles taking care not to tip in to the deep groughs. Alongside other partner members from FOG we helped to extinguish the visible areas of fire and smoke.
Once our 500 litres of onboard water was used we’d traverse back across ‘the moon’ to the A57 Snake Summit to resupply .
There were some safety issues today, before the police managed to close the road, with the usual suspects treating the A57 as a race track whilst it was being concurrently used as the Incident Control centre and logistics hub for a multi agency incident. Having two fingers waved at you whilst asking someone to slow down so they don’t either kill a firefighter or drive their pride and joy in to a lot of tons of fire tender seemed to be the norm.
Later in the day we would use the thermal drone to identify hot spots in the groughs around Salvin Ridge and towards and along the tree line, and then go ‘all in’ with hoses and spades to expose the hot layer of peat and soak it. Oftentimes the moor had burnt out but the underlip of the grough edges was still hot – some we recorded at over 300c. We ended up quite feral, covered in peat and often disappearing in to 10ft deep groughs on missions against hotspots. We did this for several hours before calling it a day as the evening shift of retained firefighters arrived on scene once more.
Back to the Eastern Moors base. Wash in a sink. Microwave meal and a milkshake. Sort vehicles. Out on evening patrol.
Sunday
The persistent spell of rain for ~20 hours which started at ~8pm on Saturday will help dampen everything down. At some point the Incident Commander will hand the site back to the National Trust. I would expect that (even despite the rains) a few thermal drone supported teams of rangers will head up on Monday to identify areas of heat in the peat and apply water. Fire in deep heat can resurface weeks or months later as flame.
Effort
One of our small team from EMP reviewed the medical data off his Garmin after a day (12hrs) of wildfire fighting on the Friday.
A pulse above 110 for most of the day and peaking at about 180
>6000 calories expended
about 32000 steps done
O2 SATS averaged out at about 94% for the day.
Maybe we could start a new fitness fad called Grough Fit ™️
Observations
1. One of the senior fire officers made two telling observations
That was one of the fastest moving fire fronts (around late morning on Friday) he had ever seen
and
Everybody had had put in some exceptional amounts of graft on Friday to get on top of that fire
2. Backgrounds, politics, organisations and viewpoints were set aside and everyone mucked in with everyone and grafted hard. Everyone had a voice. People helped people. One cause.
3. A firefighter walking across the charred moonscape of Salvin Ridge carrying a tray of pink iced doughnuts for the crews 👌.
4. There were people within a kilometre of this fire ‘wild camping’ with fire whilst this fire was ongoing.
5. The cost to the taxpayer (probably 40+ emergency services vehicles there on Friday plus their crews), public (closure of A57 for best part of 2 days), FOG partners (as an example the helicopter was £2500 an hour) from these fires is immense.
6. The cost to nature is horrific.
7. The politics of why landscape scale fires are occuring more and more frequently in the uplands of the UK, and particularly in the Peak District, are obfuscated and complicated. As ever, the mainstream news outlets or the accounts of he (or she) who shouts loudest on social media are the last places to go to understand the issues.
‘The plural of anecdote isn’t data’ – Guy Shrubsole
8. The charred leveret will live long in my memory.
9. The stress and sadness of the Head Ranger for this part of the National Trust estate was worn on her sleeve and etched in to the sweat and grime on her face.
10. Thanks to my colleagues for having my back, coping with my incompetence and for the dark humour of yet another ‘EMP adventure’.
11. Ear worm of the fire was On The Road Again by Willie Nelson. No idea why. Driving across ‘the moon’ singing this ….
12. Handheld thermal readers for close-up hotspotting. Small drones for a quick heads up and safety. Highly capable drones for situational awareness, thermal mapping, safety, security and efficiency. Most importantly for keeping the professionals and trained volunteers that form the FOG safe. Get on the tech super-highway. It keeps people alive.
12. Wildfires in the Peak District are caused by humans. There are various climatic reasons why their severity may be greater but the cause of ignition directly involves a human being. Wildfires in the Peak District are caused by humans.
13. None of this wildfire or the last wildfire or the next wildfire changes anything.
Drone imagery giving context to the scale of the fire …
Bit of map help please ….. i’m looking for a place called ‘Somewhere Else’ ? I think it’s in or near the Hope Valley ?
I’ve been reading the various reports about, and responses to, the imminent implementation of parking restrictions around Castleton and Mam Tor.
Local MP’s are rejoicing that their campaign to relieve local parking issues and the associated problems with litter will be realised.
A recurrent answer to the large number of well reasoned questions asking ‘where will all the visitors now park’ is a place called ‘Somewhere Else’. Even when those asking the questions have gone to the efforts of researching all available public transport options (to the west end of the Hope Valley) and made the observation that neither public transport supply nor current legal car parking capacity can meet current demand – and ergo the private vehicle remains the only viable transport option for the majority of visitors – the response remains, ‘they can park Somewhere Else’.
It’s not a solution at all. It’s a celebration of shifting a massive problem further east along the Hope Valley across Parish and Constituency boundaries. Nimbysim and performative politics.
If we presume that resources will be found to enforce the new measures, then the impact on businesses in the area will be quickly apparent. The oxygen that is the tourist pound will be turned off.
Furthermore, when you then add the verge parking restrictions and £500 fine along the ‘northern edge’ of the Hope Valley (around Stanage North Lees, Burbage, Higger Tor, Quiet Lane and The Dale) potentially from Autumn 2026, and then close Surprise View Car Park for ~12 months (from ~Oct 2026 whilst the Ladybower to Worksop pipe is laid), and offer no viable alternatives for the current levels of vehicle borne visitor densities, you create utter and absolute chaos.
Painting lines on roads and fining visitors isn’t a viable strategy for a sustainable visitor transport solution. Nor is telling visitors to go ‘Somewhere Else’.
Two brothers learn about competitive birdwatching by becoming birdwatchers—spending a year living in a used minivan, traveling the country to compete in a ‘Big Year’.
Here is the clip from Countryfile yesterday (Sunday 19/4) that features some of the Eastern Moors Partnership team (including me) chatting about deploying, recovering and analysing Acoustic Recording Units (ARUs).
That clip was focussed on ARUs listening for owls. I went back out tonight (without the TV crew – much quicker) and positioned another two ARUs which will listen for Nightjar. These birds are incredible at camouflage and oftentimes when i’m out in the dark i hear them calling.
Nightjar
Here’s a self-filmed clip from tonight of me positioning one …
The positioning of the devices is part science, part previous knowledge and part guess. The sweaty back of me in the second clip (from tonight) is because the 3 metre square i had to put the ARU in earlier was in a complete b*stard of a place through a fallen tree covered swamp 🥵. It was however utterly teeming with birdlife 🥰.
Use the MerlinBird app to listen and learn about what birds are out and about on your walks. I can highly recommend a dusk in to dark o’ clock walk in any open green space, fields or countryside with the app on in your pocket.
If you’ve never heard their call, Nightjar is the first bird on the Cosmo Sheldrake album ‘Wake Up Calls’.
I saw a Derbyshire Police reel last week that explained their aspiration that telephone calls to 101 are left to those people less able to use mobile devices to ‘live chat’ with the police.
Hmmmffff thought i, as someone that has cause to ring 101 reasonably regularly as a countryside ranger and sometimes sits on wait for over ten minutes (whilst the incident or person i was ringing about disappears).
So yesterday we rangers had cause to inform both South Yorkshire Police and Derbyshire Constabulary about something that we were informed might happen hereabouts. So i used Live Chat to inform both police forces. You have to give your name, email and mobile number.
In both instances the information was received quickly and the call handler e-chatted to me promptly. I was also sent an email address to send supporting imagery.
It just so happens that a ranger colleague was stood talking to a Derbyshire Constabulary police officer in a patrol car about 5 miles away whilst i was using Live Chat. He saw the intelligence appear on the screen in the car less than a minute or two after i had finished typing. The officers were then alerted to the issue and had access to the images. Same same for a South Yorkshire Police officer that a farmer spoke to later that day – he had also received the content of the Live Chat promptly and was actively patrolling one of the areas in question.
It works.
The police in rural areas and villagers that we work with talk about significant frustration that they don’t have all the jigsaw pieces about an incident in order to make further enquiries or an arrest – and oftentimes they know incidents were witnessed or that information is known but the public just don’t take the few minutes to offer up the information / evidence.
And so it was that a day after the Peak District National Park celebrated its 75th birthday, another icon of the British landscape climbed out of bed, put on its pipe and slippers and said ‘move aside youth’.
Happy 90th birthday today to the humble ‘trig point’.
The Ordnance Survey’s first trig point was erected on 18 April 1936 near Cold Ashby, Northamptonshire.
The process of placing trig points on top of prominent hills and mountains began in 1935 to assist in the accurate retriangulation of Great Britain.
When all the trig points were in place, it was possible in clear weather to see at least two other trig points from any one trig point.
Careful measurements of the angles between the lines-of-sight of the other trig points then allowed the construction of a system of triangles which could then be referenced back to a single baseline to construct a highly accurate measurement system that covered the entire country.
In most of the UK, trig points are truncated square concrete (occasionally stone) pyramids or obelisks tapering towards the top.
On the top a brass plate with three arms and a central depression is fixed, known as a “spider”: it is used to mount and centre a theodolite used to take angular measurements to neighbouring trig points. A benchmark is usually set on the side, marked with the letters “O S B M” (Ordnance Survey Bench Mark) and the reference number of the trig point on a plaque called a “flush plate”.
Within and below the visible trig point, there are concealed reference marks whose National Grid References are precisely known.
The standard trig point design is credited to Brigadier Martin Hotine (1898–1968), head of the Trigonometrical and Levelling Division of the Ordnance Survey. Many of them are now disappearing from the countryside as their function has largely been superseded by digital mapping techniques and GPS.
Today the receivers that make up the OS Net network are coordinated to an accuracy of just 3 mm over the entire length of Great Britain.
There are over 6500 trig points still visible in the UK.
Ben Nevis has the highest trig pillar; the lowest is Little Ouse, at -0.533m below sea level, in Cambridgeshire.
How many times as hillwalkers, fell runners and mountaineers have you and your lungs been grateful to finally reach one of these bloody things on a day out in the British mountains ?
Start on the first stepping stone. Go all the way down the waterside path to the wrought iron gate at the bottom. Come back up.
Go steady on the wet roots and beware all of it after heavy rain.
Carry your winter call-out rucksack for added fun.
If you’ve got a summer trekking holiday planned you could do worse than test your boots and rucksack out in here. Shades of a Scottish glen or an alpine gorge
Couldn’t get on new bench 1 as it was occupied at the time
NB1
A pedal down to Wyming Brook.
Couldn’t get on New Bench 1 as it was occupied at the time
Freewheeled down to NB2
One minor positive of the necessary felling of diseased trees is the new vantage points. They’ve been put in as part of a big Spring spruce up by the Wildlife Trust. Looks nice. As long as you’re okay with it being funded by the folks running landfills and incinerators.
Had some of the NoNormal™️ squeezy coffee stuff. Fussed a few dogs. Sat in the sun. Freewheeled down to the res. Huffed and puffed back up and then made use of the tailwind to make best haste to a piece of cake that held 3x more calories than i’d used on the ride.
