Nature Diary Rocks History Gallery Links Home Page 
A DULL LATE AFTERNOON; low sun, half hidden by a bank of cloud, glows like a molten copper kettle-drum. Pylons march towards it along a side valley.
Storrs Hill was my route to and from Ossett Grammar School for five years. Though I saw it twice a day, it never lost it's sense of wildness. There was no such subject as environmental studies in those days. Apart from an annual coach trip there were no visits out of school. As a wildlife illustrator/writer I realise that what I learned from experiencing the hill in all weathers has been as important to me as anything I learned in the classroom. In my school days there wasn't graffiti on every rock face, the turf wasn't worn bare by motorbikes, there weren't piles of road chippings dumped in the quarry nor was there anywhere near as much fly-tipped rubbish in Matty Marsden lane at the foot of the hill. Today the stone steps and wooden handrail alongside the quarry have been laboriously ripped out by vandals.
 But the rocks remain, there is still as much wildlife and the view of a great meander of the Calder valley, with the top of the Pennine moors to the west, is as spectacular as ever it was. It's a dreadful thing to say, but, in a way, I don't want to see it tidied up. The 'Hollywood' grafitti makes me smile. If it wasn't for young 'vandals' setting fire to Gorse and scarring the hill with bike tracks the hill would probably have turned to woodland since my schooldays. They would probably be horrified to learn it, but they are acting an unofficial habitat-management task-force.
|
On the ridge opposite, the sandstone outcrop of Storrs Hill, a pylon stands like the Iron Man in the children's story by Ted Hughes, looking down on the town. Hughes was born not far from here at Mytholmroyd.