Rainow, Cheshire, England

My first encounter with Rainow was on an August bank holiday Monday bike ride that exposed me to the steepness of the gradients around here, a consequence of its nestling in a sheltering steep sided valley. Along with the memory of an August foray to Buxton, it may have made me susceptible to the charms of hill walking as a means of exploring hill country.One of those flanks is the cause of the shadow in the lower part of the photo late of a day in December when I was following the Gritstone Trail as far as the White Nancy, near Bollington.

These days, the village is a pleasant backwater but it has an industrial past: coal mining and quarrying. These continued for centuries until the building of the Macclesfield Canal and the arrival of cheap coal from Staffordshire. The coal mining has been consigned to history though there still is some quarrying on nearby Kerridge Hill. On the day of making the photo, that hill was where I was bound next, after the last steep ascent of the day in fact.