Smoke on the Water

Apologies to anyone who will now have: “Duuh, duuh, duuh, duh-duh duh-duh, duuh, duuh, duuh, duh-duh…” stuck in their brain for the next few hours (the unsurmountable wall of bass that is the first few bars of Deep Purple’s Smoke on the Water), but I couldn’t help myself…

Last night I was clearing photos off my phone and I realised that some of them were taken exactly one year ago today and/or this week, when the moors above my house, on Winter Hill, were all over the news – and on fire.

To mark the anniversary of the start of the Winter Hill fire, I thought I’d post a couple of my (rediscovered) pictures.

The first was taken from Blackrod, about three miles (maybe) as the crow flies from Winter Hill, in the evening, just when everyone was starting to realise that the moors were on fire:

 

These next two, taken a couple of days later, show what sunset looked like over Lower Rivington Reservoir, which is something like two miles (maybe) closer to Winter Hill than Blackrod:

(I wasn’t being a disaster ghoul, by the way, I just happened to be staying in Horwich, which is the town closest to Winter Hill, and the reservoir, was a good place to walk. Although, I admit, probably not with all that smoke floating around.)

I remember taking this picture below, but the date stamp on it took me completely by surprise: 9 July – ie while Winter Hill was still burning. It’s a surprise because when I took it I was actually closer, as the crow flies, to Winter Hill than I was when I took the pictures at the reservoir:

How much clearer does the sky look? Yet Winter Hill was still burning, to the right of the picture; the wind must have been in the other direction. I didn’t take the picture because of the fire, but because I thought that cloud looked like a pillowy human figure – the Michelin Man, say,  – bobbing over the moors face down, having a good look at what was going on.

With this summer being – until very recently – such a washout, it’s less likely that the moors will suffer another such fire this year, thank goodness. Every cloud …. and all that, I suppose.