It’s a common assumption that modern life invariably gets faster as the decades pass: not in Millers Dale. Had I been tramping down past Glebe Farm a hundred years ago, I would have seen an express train to London roaring across the twin viaducts that span the river Wye here, a scene of noise and smoke, the dramatic climax to an engineering magic trick that threaded a major railway through this wildly beautiful gorge.
The landscape then was clipped and treeless; now it is lush and sleepy, the steep hillside opposite fat with hawthorn and ash, the latter yellowing in the watery sunshine of a late September morning. The line itself has been silent since the Beeching-era cuts and is now the Monsal Trail, a popular walking and cycling route attracting 140,000 people each year. Tourists these days have more time to appreciate the skill and courage of the workers who built this improbable line. The Wye’s soft voice is audible again.
Walking down the hill, I could see restoration work was under way on the north viaduct, built in 1905 to increase the line’s capacity. It was wreathed in a white tent, like a chrysalis waiting for the big reveal. A man in an orange jacket hung from a rope on one of the stone-faced pillars. The Monsal Trail follows the original southern viaduct, and I have often paused crossing it to mourn how the elegant steel latticework of its closed northern sibling was mouldering away. Now its future seemed more secure, although when work finishes next spring it will still be closed to the public.
I couldn’t help but look beyond to the ash trees on the hillside above me. Like the men at work on the viaduct, these restoration specialists were pioneers in healing the landscape here after the invasion of the railway and the quarrying that followed. Now the shadow of ash dieback hangs over them, as it has for several years now. Derbyshire’s dales, nature reserves crammed full of ash trees, could be among the biggest casualties: no one really knows how bad the outbreak will prove. Bridges are simple things compared with the intricate web of life, and easier to fix.
