On Ilkla Moor bar t’at
Ilkley Moor is about 20 miles northwest of Leeds. The bus from Headingley along the Otley Road takes about an hour. It was that easy to escape from the city and breath in the fresh, usually cold, air of the Yorkshire Moors.
I wasn’t much of a rambler in the early 1970s. The countryside nearest to the suburbs where I grew up in Birmingham was farmland with restricted access. There were no wild bits. The woods were small, usually fenced off, unless they had been designated as parkland like the Lickey Hills. My friend, Gill came from Manchester where the Moors were in easy reach. It was her idea to escape momentarily from university studies and stretch our legs on the Moors.
I am grateful for that introduction. Nowadays, I walk whenever I get the opportunity and I have a regular date with Robin, my long-term walking companion. Over the last fifty years we have trekked in several countries in Britain, Europe and Africa and covered hundreds, if not thousands, of miles.
It was not just the exercise which appealed. I discovered hills, lakes, forests, and skies. I continue to be astonished by the diversity of our landscape. I am exhilarated by the panoramas and the open horizons. I speculate about my forebears who walked the ancient pathways, built villages, tombs and erected great standing stones. I wondered at the smallness of myself, a miniscule dot between the mass of the Earth and the infinite sky.
I first heard about ‘ecology’ when studying botany for my ‘A’ levels. This was long before it became used as a marketing ploy on detergent bottles. On the Yorkshire Moors, you can see ecological processes at work, the interactions and connections between living and non-living, and the movement of energy, water, nutrients and species. In the 1970s, James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis published their ‘Gaia Hypothesis’, describing how our planet was in mortal danger due to human actions. That Earth was a self-regulating ‘organism’ was then seen as an eccentric view. However, the dangers of climate change are now accepted as inevitable.
The desire to know more about our Earth, and the natural history of humans living on it, led me to an interest in my ancestors. We have shaped and controlled the world for our own purposes, but our forebears were subject to the environment, its seasons and its vagaries. Half-forgotten ideas about stone circles, Druidic ceremonies, stone age hunting and the like were resurrected in the 1970s.
A recent edition of Alfred Watkin’s book. Cover is an illustration by Eric Ravilious.
One intriguing idea came from a man who wrote about ancient trackways in the 1920s. His name was Alfred Watkins and he explained his theory in The Old Straight Track. He showed how those tracks could still be followed today, if you knew how to look for the signs. Ancient burial mounds, sacred sites, geological features, ponds, woods etc could be plotted in straight lines across the countryside. There were clues in the old names of places.
Watkins called these ‘ley lines’. I tried it myself with an OS one inch map of Leeds and Bradford. I was astonished by the result. It was possible to draw straight lines across areas of open moorland which connected these features. I went into the countryside to check for myself. Just outside Harrogate, following a line I had drawn connecting hillocks and other features, I found myself walking along an ancient earthwork, which was not on the map, adding more evidence of the ley line. I am convinced that Alfred Watkins’ observations have some validity.
An OS map, with ley lines marked by me in the 1970s.
This is a section of my map. You will note the straight lines connecting marked features. The line which I numbered ‘113’ goes from north-west to south-east for just over four miles between Bardsey and Barwick in Elmet. Four ancient sites are marked on the line. Other features which suggest a ley line are on or very close to the marked line including two churches with towers and a hilltop with a farm building. At Scarcroft Hill I marked three or four other ley lines which crossed at this significant high point. I admit that this is no proof that there are such trackways. But, would it not be marvellous if it were true…
Derek Perry
50 years ago today 