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Download mp3 of A Guided walk with a Park Ranger Track 2'
The text below is a transcript of Track 2 of the walk.
As we go into the quarry we can either turn left up the steps or carry on around the mound and left at the end of the mound.
These mounds are created from waste from the quarry and have been colonised by Heather and Bilberry.
We take it for granted that heather is a pretty plant but it has quite a history, we have a lot of heather in this part of the country and when it is in flower in July and August it certainly is a sensational sight …In the past it has been used in the foundation of wattle and daub to thatch roofs, to make brooms to sweep the floor and the stems have even been used to make ropes.
The top of the plant can be used as a dye to make beer or even tea.
And it will no surprise to any walker that has rested on a heather bush for a break…. that it has been universally used for bedding for man and beast alike, as it soft supporting, and fragrant ……………………the Scottish settlers even took the plants to America and naturalised it there….. You can just imagine the home sick Scots taking comfort at night from there own native heather.
The birds that we see at Teggs Nose are very diverse we offer many different types of homes from moor to meadow to woodland, the sparrow hawk and kestrel are regular visitors, woodpeckers are not uncommon and the pied flycatchers in the wood often come and turf the tits out of their homes as soon as they just get comfy, wheatear redstarts skylarks gosh lots more, when I think about it, it is a pretty marvellous place for the birdwatcher.
As we go up the hill there is some diagonal stone in the path this is to divert the water needless to say rain is something we get quite a lot of in this part of the world.
As we look to the left we can see a large conifer forest ……..this is Macclesfield Forest a 1000 acres of conifers with many walks and tracks. The forest was planted in the 1920s there are two reservoirs in the forest these are drinking water for Macclesfield and beyond.
The word forest forest doesn’t necessarily refer to a place of trees it can mean an area where dear is hunted, and this is the case in Macclesfield forest.
In 1500 Cardinal Woolsey sent a commission of enquiry to find out how much land around here had been enclosed, one extract from the finding said “Another Common in Sutton has been taken from a Place called Nessit to a place called Tegg of Naze”
Cardinal Woolsey – Come in Edmund, how was it in the county of Cheshire?
Sir Edmund – Very fine M'lord, we’ve been in Maccas field, a rich hunting forest, we saw a herd of eighty deer but another common has been taken in a place called Sutton, one mile from Nesset to a place called Tegg of Nase.
Cardinal Woolsey – Has it indeed? I think that calls for a drink. Mead or ale Edmund?
Sir Edmund – Oh, mead please M'lord.
Cardinal Woolsey – Chrispin, mead for Sir Edmund!
Chrispin – Yes, M'lord, of course M'lord.
The hill in the distance is Shutlingslow 1659 feet that’s 506meteres above sea level only the second highest hill in Cheshire not bad for a county that is know to be flat.
As we look down into the valley called Walker Barn Valley we can see some farms all built long ways on to protect them from the wild wind that we get in the winter.
On some of the farms you can generally see big bales covered in either green or black polythene these are silage which is grass that is cut in summer and put in these big air tight bales to gently ferment for feeding the stock in winter.
Apparently the green bales are supposed to deter the crows ripping them open as they think that the black bales are filled with rubbish. When they cut these bales open you get a wonderful smell of the fermented grass.
There are several scrubby bits of vegetation as we go into the quarry rosebay willow herb, nettles, bramble - these scrubby areas are really important for wildlife such as butterflies and moths.
In Britain we only have 56 species of butterflies 2 1/2 thousand species of moth, not to mention the 100 thousand species of flies in the world and in summer these plants act as a busy feeding station.
Now each of these plants have there own fascinating history, take rosebay willow herb for example, it is about 4 foot tall and has a reddy purpley flower, during the last war it got the name of fireweed, as it often cropped up wherever there was a fire and at one time it was suggested that the Germans were putting the seeds in the nose cone of bombs, as it always came up on bomb sites in 1840 it was described as rare, and now it can be found in every county in the country, it probably followed the railway, the seed getting on and off trains.
Most plants and animals have a Latin name as well as a common one Epilobium augustifolium is Rosebay's Latin name some people ask me why they have a Latin name, I not sure myself really, but the Latin names often come in handy, as when giving a guided walk you can guarantee that some bright spark will ask you the name of a plant you have never seen before, so its always handy to pop in your spare Latin name. Oh, I can't remember the common name but it's Latin name is “Letuca Polyfillya macrofillia”
As we go into the quarry proper we can see small shrubby trees - these are all willow………..willow is a remarkable tree and it has been used for lots of things in the past, not just for weaving. But one of the most remarkable things about it is its medicinal properties.
As early as the fifth century bc people were grinding down willow bark to extract a pain killing drug to help cure arthritis and headaches. Now who first decided to do this I don’t know but I’ve tried it and it is the most appalling bitter taste. Just pull a bit of bark off a twig and try chewing it. However the new name given to the drug extracted from willow bark in 1899 was of course aspirin.
Teggs Nose has been a quarry for some time, well we think since about 1500.
The quarry can be quite a wild place in winter, walkers sometimes get caught out by not wearing hat and gloves. Very different from the plains 600 foot below.
As we walk into the quarry we can see on right hand side it is very poor quality stone it tends to be very friable as we walk on we will find some display machinery that used to work in the quarry: a small stone crusher, a crane and the big square thing is actually a stone saw that used to be driven by a steam engine. You can just imagine it years ago with all the noise and men clambering over the rocks, levering them off.
And it's said if you stand very quietly you can still hear the distant sound of the steam engines.
The quarry was used to quarry stone for street kerbs, flagstones and stone kerbs and cobbles. Some of the time it was quite small scale, and other times men worked furiously in the quarry. There is evidence of railway tracks around the quarry as well. The rubble was dropped over the end of the Nose, as we will see when we get to the viewpoint. Teggs Nose stone was used to widen the promenade at Douglas on the Isle of Man and the work took place between 1928 and 1934. During the last war the Americans came, and they brought big Lorries and pneumatic drills, and quarried for aggregates for runways. The pneumatic drills were very welcomed by the locals as it gave them a break form the blasting that often threw stones down into the valley below.
Many of the buildings are built from Teggs Nose Stone. Sainsbury’s is one example that was built out of the demolished infirmary.
During the summer we had a geologist from Chester University, Cynthia Bureck, visit the Country park and here she is talking about the stone in the quarry.
During the summer we had a geologist visit the park, Dr Cynthia Bureck and I had the opportunity to ask her a few questions about the park’s geology:
Ian – What sort of rock is it Cynthia in the quarry?
Dr Cynthia Bureck – It’s sedimentary rock. It’s sandstone, it’s quite old. It’s carboniferous sandstone.
Ian – You’re rushing me there a bit, what does sedimentary mean?
Dr Cynthia Bureck – Oh, sedimentary means that it’s been glued or stuck together from things that were there previously.
Ian – How old is it?
Dr Cynthia Bureck – It’s about 325 million years, give or take a couple of million.
Ian – Where was Britain when that was around?
Dr Cynthia Bureck – We were over the equator. It’s a time period called the carboniferous. The first part of that is carbon and there are a lot of coals around, and that’s where the word carbon comes from.
Ian – So why is it so hilly here when Cheshire is considered fairly flat?
Dr Cynthia Bureck – Most of Cheshire is a big basin surrounded on the east and the west by mountains and most of the basin is full of red rocks which are much much younger than the rocks around here. These rocks are quite resistant to weathering, they’ve been here an awfully long time. You can just look west and the whole of the Cheshire basin is there in front of you.
Ian – So did ice cover here?
Dr Cynthia Bureck – Yes, now we’re talking about a lot younger, much closer to us in time. Perhaps about 13,000 years ago, we would have been covered in ice, 14,000 years ago. By 10,000 years, we know the ice had disappeared, but you can imagine the ice moving as a body into the Cheshire basin and then just creeping up to the edge of the Pennines and then spilling over the top and just dumping everything. You know, dumping its sands and its gravels and its big boulders.
Ian – What about the valleys around here, were they formed by ice?
Dr Cynthia Bureck – Yes they were. They’ve been really etched out by the ice. Ice is like anything else, it likes weaknesses. So if there’s a weakness there, the ice will gouge that out in preference to something that’s harder. So all the valleys round here have been etched out by the ice.
Ian – Thank you Cynthia, that was very interesting.
It’s quite amazing to think that now we’re walking on stone that is 325 million years old. That the dinosaurs walked on it too!
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