Egerton Quarry, growls & finds
By
Mick Mclaren
Mick Mclaren
On the 19th March my partner and I went for a night
time walk to try our new torches out, which we were going to use on a full moon
walk over Anglezarke moor on April the 8th, of which we didn’t get
to do because of the Coronavirus lockdown. The area we chose to go is not far
from my home and is in such a lovely area of Bolton, just on the west Pennine
moors on the edge of the village of Egerton.
We parked the car on the end of Cox Green road, on the Dimple
side of the quarry, to a path I knew that wasn’t too rugged seeing that we were
walking in the dark and it would be easier on our feet.
On entering the gate, we walked a few metres along before
turning the torches on and looking over the field next to the path. As we did,
we heard a vixen give a call of warning out to another fox that called back in
return. We carried on, stopping every so often to have a good look round until
we reached the next gate.
By this time, it had gone completely dark and there was not
a single street lighting reflecting here, that was because the path had curved round
the wooded area that was on top of the quarry edge. We carried on walking the
path, hoping at some point to maybe bump into a deer along the way, as we knew
that they came to the quarry at night. As we got closer to a wooded area, we
noticed how noisy the birds in this area were, at this time of night (8:30) it
should have been quiet. We approached the area feeling hesitant to carry on
that way on the account of us both feeling extremely nervous. Rather than going
through the woods we decided to go around and get to the path to the other side,
when we reach the path which went through the open field I turned my torch to
the line of woods and we heard something growling at us, at that point we carried
on walking at a faster pace but as we walked the path what ever growled was
stalking along in the trees behind us. We could hear twigs snapping as well as
the feeling of being watched. As we got to near the end of the field I felt a
little braver to stop and turn my torch again to shine one last time at the
woods to see if I could see any sign of what might have been in the trees, what
ever it was stopped when we did but the noise from the birds was at a crescendo
and not for stopping. We carried on and so did whatever was shadowing us until
we were far enough away that we could not hear the foot fall behind.
It did not take us that long to get to cottages on Cox Green
road, from the field of what used to be a land fill site near the Last Drop
Village, where we had parked the car.
Alfred Watkins in his book The Old Straight Track recorded
three Leys in Lancashire which had been found by a man from Farnworth named Harold
A Barnes. The first connected Worsley old hall, Great Lever hall, Hall I’th
wood and a stone circle on Turton Heights called Cheetham Close Stone Circle.
When looking on one of the many maps I have, I could see that this Ley line was
running from Hall I’th wood through the wooded area, were the growls and stalking
took place over the golf course and up to the stone circle.
We left it a day before going back to investigate the area some
more, this time we made sure it would be in the day light hours. Arriving and
parking up we went straight to the quarry area to have a look round. Walking
down the path at the top of the quarry we noticed a small tree had been broken and
bent over, and down at the bottom was about three tracks we could take. The
first track on our left took us to a structure of what looked like a bush craft
shelter in the process of being made. A little further was a stream were we
could see deer track and over near the quarry wall was a pile of rock in a
pyramid shape, I decided to leave a small quartz crystal there has a gift for
whatever had growled at us the other night. After looking around and finding in
clusters every so often sticks leaning on trees and stacks of twigs in lower
branches we went up to the top of the quarry to make our way back to the wooded
area we were growled from.
At the top of the quarry along a path leading to the golf
course we came across a small crop of birch trees that had been broken in two,
snapped in places, one of the largest ones of about ten inches in diameter about
one metre from the ground with its top half just lying on the floor next to its
new stump. I know in this area there isn’t a path big enough or road for any vehicles
to go along and maybe cause this to happen.
When we reached the
wooded area, we looked about and noticed lots of broken branches that were
leaning on trees and came across a deer track. At one point we came across
a bunch of small broken twigs in a pile
covering a dead crow, branches in that area were freshly broken and laid about and
around the bottom of the trees, a little farther down the track was what looked
like the beginning of a another bush craft shelter. I took photos to document the
finds before heading back.
At least three days had past before going back this time
with the purpose of video documenting the finds. Deciding to head for the
wooded area first, we got to the shelter to find that a fallen tree had been
lent onto the branches of the tree opposite, we got further in and I noticed lots
of sticks being lent against trees and as we got to the area of the growl incident
there was a snapped off branch that had been placed across a path, and along and
at the end of the path we came to another tree snapped at the bottom and placed
across with two more uprooted trees, one still alive and roots attached to the
ground. Walking over to the kill site of the bird covered with twigs we could
see it had been moved a little with the twigs being pushed to one side, and in
the surrounding area sticks leaning on trees with broken branches lying in between
trees. After one last look about, we
At the top of the quarry I video documented the birch trees
that had been snapped and laid around the ground, we headed down to the quarry and
followed the path and then headed to a stream area were the bush craft shelter is,
which seemed to have had a bit more work done to it. After heading to the pyramid
pile of rocks and leaving an apple to see that quartz crystal had been taken. (maybe
a magpie or even the spirits of that place) We will be heading back over the
next few weeks to investigate more.
