Walkers dust their boots off

It's Easter! ... and the start of the getting-out-and-about season.  Walkers have dusted off their boots, extracted the winter mothballs from their jackets, and are heading off into the Great Outdoors once again.

The Tea Room at Wetton Mill opened for the 2016 season last week.

Locked into a cave

It's strange how often one comes across a small hillside cave that has a locked grille-gate to it.
I have never quite figured out what's going on though. My first guess is that someone found the cave and thought it might be a useful storage area or temporary animal pen - especially as they are often in remoter areas - so they put in a secure gate and a lintel to hold it in place. 
One shudders to think that it might have been used as a prison/lock-up for humans. 
But I really don't know.
This one is on the road at Dale Bridge near Wetton.

Tunnel for Halloween

Question for Halloween: why are tunnels so spooky?  There are some Freudian answers to this I suppose, but it gets complicated.

My favourite 'ghost' scene' from a movie occurs in Kurosawa's Dreams, which is surely one of the most imaginative films of all time.   In the scene, some soldiers - in strict march formation, their boots clacking loudly, unseen by the main character - emerge from the darkness of a tunnel.  The twist is that the soldiers are ghosts, but they don't actually know it.   That premise is scary enough, but the tunnel (as Kurosawa knew) is the key element.


Swainsley Tunnel, should you care to walk it (!), is on the Manifold Way path.

Thor's Cave is 87th

According to Trip Advisor, Thor's Cave is ranked a very poor 87th of all the 150 attractions in Staffordshire.
Though that sounds daft, in fact the assessment is about right - the cave, albeit of great pre-history significance, is just a rather slimy-slippery large hole in the side of the crag (the one in this photo) and doesn't ... IMHO ... have much of a 'feel'.

It's much better to choose one of the local fantastic walks, and see it from a distance!