40. Staveley

CC Site
July 2nd-3rd

Yorkshire is a big county, big mass, high gravity. By the time I had reached its escape velocity I was going so fast that I was catapulted clean past Leeds and Sheffield and landed in Derbyshire, seventy-two miles further south. Staveley is four miles from Chesterfield and the site is two miles from Staveley. Here we are right bang in the middle of what used to be the York/Notts/Derbys coal field. The site itself is on the reclaimed, beautifully landscaped Ireland Colliery, once one of the biggest in Britain. Now, you would never know there had ever been anything here but lakes, fields, hedges and trees. Astonishing!

I remember driving through this area in the early 'Seventies. I used to drive up and down the M1 and A1 twice a week after our company moved up to Washington, Tyne and Wear, from Horsham. I used to stop off for a rest at Junction 26 or 27 or 28, which was about half-way. As soon as you stopped you could smell the coal in the air. It was so thick you could almost see the coal dust in the air.     

Some time later our company was negotiating to buy a file foundry in Sheffield (engineering files, for shaping metal, not those paper things that the Metropolitan Police keep losing). Had this deal gone through the company would have moved to Sheffield from Washington and I had a look at Chesterfield and the edge of the Peak District for places to live. Choosing Chesterfield would have been a mistake, although I believe Emlyn Hughes used to live there. Forty years later I was going to have a closer look.

 

I spent my first afternoon getting the Blog up to date and then went to bed. Waking later I watched an old Wycliffe, which was about the Beast of Bodmin. That reminded me of the Beast of Bolsover, Bolsover being just five miles to the east. Dennis Skinner, possibly the last of the old Labour left-wing, eighty-two years old and still, incredibly, in the Commons as member for Bolsover after forty-four years. He must be very lonely in the House amongst all those designer suits, Rolexes and political correctness. Now his old mate Chris Mullins has retired, who does he have a pint with?

Off on the bike this morning to Chesterfield via the Trans-Pennine Trail which passes close to the site. It's a great trail, well-surfaced and eight-feet wide, but is very badly signed. In fact, you have as much chance of crossing the Apennines as the Pennines. After re-tracing my steps twice I ended in another old colliery, the Arkwright. I had to retreat again and climbed up a footpath on to the A632 Bolsover-Chesterfield road. Luckily there was a pavement all the way into the town.

Chesterfield is probably just fine, but it suffered in my eyes in comparison with Harrogate. Harrogate has style and class, Chesterfield has a twisted spire on its parish church. It's a bit worrying when the main asset of which a town boasts is an aberration, a deformity. It has a big central square and this, and most of the rest of the town for that matter, was filled with the regular Thursday flea market. My cycle ride was twenty-six kilometres there and back and I'm not entirely sure the arriving was worth the journey. I enjoyed the ride itself, though. On the whole, I would probably not make a detour to visit Chesterfield gain. It certainly has a twisted spire on its parish church though.