Vandalism, repaired
I've dumped my photo album onto my laptop, and today, whilst I was waiting in the garage for my car to be fixed, I started to sort them out - the problem with digital cameras is that it's far easier to take photos than it is to keep track of them! I've found some stuff I should really post, so expect it to come out in dribs and drabs over the next few weeks. Here's the first installment. Anyone who has visited the front page of this website will see a picture of two 'kissing stones'.
These are more properly known as Wain Stones, a famous Dark Peak landmark, and an ancient land boundary marker. I have an enlarged version of the picture as my desktop background as well, so I'm quite fond of them. Last year, the farmer who's land they are on (Bob Clarke) sadly died. Someone - goodness know who - thought it would be a good idea to hack his name into one of the two rocks.
I'd only met Mr. Clark once or twice and briefly at that but Mossy Lea Farm was always immaculately tidy, as was the rest of his land - and tidyness isn't a trait farmers are known for - so I can't think he would have approved of the crude and thoughtless way his name was hacked into the stone. Needless to say, nobody who saw it was happy, and one of the other Rangers came up with a way of ameliorating the damage as far as possible. He carefully smoothed away the rough edges of the letters and then painted over the raw yellow of the fresh rock surface with a mixture of peat and used engine oil.
As you can see from the photo above, from a distance it's barely noticable - if you get up close you can still see it, but it's far better than it was.
As an interesting aside, if you look at the stones you can see they are pockmarked with small holes that look just like the bullet holes you see in the walls of shot-up buildings. Well, local rumour has it that during WWII bored pilots would strafe the stones as they passed over, so they are in fact bullet holes, softened by the passage of time. So thoughtless vandalism is nothing new...
