|
Monsal Dale
Click an
image for a large framed picture, but please
wait for all the pictures to load first
The River Wye flows through the deep valley of beautiful
Monsal Dale, a site made famous by the disused railway viaduct which
cuts dramatically through the scene. The Viaduct was Built in 1863, as a
railway route to and from Bakewell and Buxton, writer John Ruskin
notoriously proclaimed of the Monsal railway viaduct (Taken from a
plaque on the Monsal viaduct)
"There was a rocky valley between Buxton and Bakewell, once upon a
time as divine as the Vale of Temple; you might have seen the Gods there
morning and evening - Apollo and all the sweet Muses of the light -
walking in fair procession on the lawns of it, and to and fro among the
pinnacles of its crags. You cared neither for Gods nor cash (which you
did not know the way to get) you thought you could get it by what the
Times calls 'Railway Enterprise.' You enterprised a railway through the
valley - you blasted its rocks away, heaped thousands of tons of shale
into its lovely stream. The valley is gone and the Gods with it, and now
every fool in Buxton can be at Bakewell in half an hour and every fool
in Bakewell in Buxton; which you think a lucrative process of exchange -
you Fools everywhere." -John Ruskin
However, the irony of
progress is such that now the viaduct is not only considered to enhance
the natural beauty of the area, it also provides part of the course for
the Monsal Trail, a popular route through the Peak District used by
cyclists and walkers and the daredevil abseilers |