It was starting to rain as I neared the top of Sir William Hill, but if the outlook was bleak, the view was compelling. From the hill’s crest, nibbled at for quarry stone by labourers in some distant past, I looked out across Bretton Clough to Abney Low in the middle distance, a lovely hill, curved and green with a grid of white limestone walls laid across it, like fishnets. Beyond it, above the east end of the village of Abney, was the darkly brooding dome of Offerton Moor, now quickly disappearing behind gunmetal clouds.
Winter has two faces in the High Peak. Some days are crisp and frosty, with golden sunlight slanting in on its low trajectory, the bracken bronze and the gritstone crags etched against a blue heaven. On days like that there are plenty of smiling faces to greet you. More often, it’s like today, warmer but wet, the rolling hills so blanketed in grey that colour has drained from the moors and sheepwalks, as though the land’s blood was pooling in its boots. Crows in a nearby line of beeches were all in silhouette, snipped from black crepe, holding out their wings to settle again on black branches. There’s something dispiriting in such thick gloom at the fag end of the winter solstice. On days like this crows and dank sheep are often all you’ll meet. The greyness and lonely tug of the wind can settle on your soul like ashes. So as Abney Low followed Offerton behind the blank cloud, I wondered to myself what I was doing there.
Then shreds of mist began racing up the moor towards me from the valley below and everything changed. Rocks and trees disappeared as a silvery veil was thrown across them and then suddenly reappeared as the strengthening wind ripped the veil aside. A prospect that only moments earlier had seemed flat and dull was now textured and brimful of energy, the perspective closing and opening by the second. Around me, glistening with pearls of moisture, the red moor grass seemed to catch fire, so vibrant in the half-light that I could almost hear it humming. Even on the darkest days, there can be unexpected treasures.
