Tuesday 17 November 2015

Higger Tor


A view of Higger Tor from Carl Wark

Viewed from Carl Wark, the plateau like Higger Tor – capped by the coarse, pebbly upper leaf of the Chatsworth Grit – is 45 metres higher than the equivalent rocks that you are standing on and cannot be accounted for by the dip of the strata. It is the result of a fault that traverses the Burbage Valley and can also be seen in the gritstone edge towards the southern end of Burbage Rocks.

A general view of Higger Tor
By the time that I had finished looking around Carl Wark, I was accompanied by numerous other casual visitors, as well as the participants in a fell running race, and so I walked quickly up to Higger Tor, noting a variety of other similar rocks, and stopped only very briefly to look closely at a soil horizon.

Somewhere on my walk, presumably whilst steadying myself on one of the many slippery or rocky slopes, muddy water had splashed onto my camera lens – much to my annoyance.


Higger Tor
Although I noticed this when I sat down for a bite to eat, many of my views of Higger Tor were spoiled – especially updates of those I had previously taken with colour transparency film and which I have frequently used for publicity - and to illustrate various talks on the geology and architecture of South Yorkshire and the Peak District.

Everywhere on this walk there is evidence of the powerful rivers that flowed into the deltas, which existed in Namurian times - and the all round views are quite stunning. Boggy areas, with peat, cover much of the top of Higger Tor and although I didn’t include this site as part of my walk - from a distance - the slumped shales found beneath the lower leaf of the Chatsworth Grit can clearly be seen.

An example of slumped shales in the Peak District National Park