NAVIGATORS (03/02/10)

A week  ago yesterday my computer refused to function, a total failure even refusing to boot up in safe mode. After three hours of trying all I knew, with the depth of my IT knowledge I’m a little confused that it could have taken that long. I eventually came to the conclusion that the primary hard drive had failed. I now have a much better machine running Windows 7 complete with two new 350GB drives.

Got out a few times last week, mist rain, light snow and a couple of bright, cold, sunny days. We had a walk up the Doe Valley to Ribblehead. Ribblehead is dominated by the twenty four arches of the railway viaduct built to carry the Settle to Carlisle railway over Blea Moor. This line was the last line to be constructed by Navvies or Navigators so called as originally they constructed the canals or navigations. Six thousand of them took seven years to build the seventy two miles of track, tunnels and viaducts.

   Ribblehead Viaduct, one hundred and four feet high and four hundred and forty yards long.

 

This magnificent structure was finished in 1875 and cost one hundred and twenty lives, lost through a combination of disease and accident.

  The tiny church of St Leonard’s at Chapel the Dale. This church is some four miles down the valley from the railway. The railway Company paid to have the church yard extended to accommodate the labourers killed. Generous, up to a point, they are all interred in unmarked graves!

This is the memorial to these poor souls, odd it took a hundred and twenty four years to appear but it’s good it’s here.

    I really liked the atmosphere a very restful little church and really who needs a headstone when the viaduct still stands.

    Still a wee bit chilly.

Back to programme installation, laundry and other similar scintillating tasks.