Crackpots - Hiking England's Coast to Coast Way: Landscape, Laughter and Love - page 29

singing in steaming storm jackets in a bus shelter, the night we were locked out of the bed
and breakfast with the cat, the awful night in the dingy pub, the dramatic U shaped valley
and the triumphal arrival in Scotland, but not the gentle Swaledale sunshine, and its rich
pastureland. It's odd which memories we cannot shed and those that fray.
Having left the Lake District behind us and the better known climbs, most of us were taken
by surprise at the steepness of much of today's walk from Keld to Reeth. Wainwright had
a particular liking for high places, so the route led us high into lead mining country. Our
still “new“ guide Ron took delight in directing us to the remains of Crackpot Hall, hear-
ing the name as a synonym for craziness. By now we all cheerfully felt that we were sim-
ultaneously a little mad and yet never saner for having persisted on this journey, but the
building's title had little to do with lunacy and much to do with the mining landscape we
had reached. A “pot” is a deep shaft or pothole, and thus a cracked pot is a shaft with a
marked flaw. Nevertheless, we indulged Ron, chuckling over the name, whilst we drank in
the broad view.
Archaeological evidence shows that lead mining in these parts dates back at least to the Ro-
man occupation, but the industry was at its peak during the mid eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. From the perspective of more advanced technologies it is amazing to contem-
plate the sheer physical effort of extracting the lead from the seams deep inside the hill-
sides. Yet this was a way of life for generations of people who could not have conceived
that their industry would quite suddenly wither and die as the seams became exhausted and
the market flooded with cheaper imports and substitute materials. The landscape shows
both obvious and more subtle evidence of the trade. The hillsides are pockmarked with
shafts, there are ruined mine heads, buildings and smelt works with their redundant towers.
The valleys have recovered somewhat from the process of “hushing.” In a steep sided val-
ley, the streams and rivers would be dammed and then the water let out abruptly, so that
it roared down the valley with such force that it stripped the vegetation and top soil away,
exposing the seams of lead for the miners to exploit. Although Wainwright bemoaned the
industrial blight and declared that little “natural beauty” remains, I felt that by now nature
was reclaiming much of the hillside, folding into herself the ruined buildings and mine-
workings. In stark contrast, the high wastelands lay bare a lasting scar on the landscape.
For about two miles the path crosses desolate land, land so poisoned by the extraction of
lead that it cannot support life. I felt I was walking through a strained canvas entitled “Ex-
ploitation” and signed “Humanity”, one in a sad and growing series. It had the same strange
feel as witnessing a memorial. Reverence for the suffering, and deep pity. Somehow every
generation gets implicated. We rewind and reload the pattern, using cheap labor and scant
respect for resources to propel a deception of progress. In the face of an expanding popula-
tion and changing climate, let's hope we can move ahead with a measure of humility.