The little orange figure gives a sense of scale. This is by no means a large quarry (Coldstones Quarry) but it has a rather modern viewing platform.Ā I was struggling to find somewhere to take my photographic colleague (not more green Stephen!), and this place popped up in the browser at the first attempt – I didn’t know it existed.
——Stephen—–
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nice, very curious tho, what exactly is the orange figurine?
A man in a boiler suit.
dude, that’s one deep quarry!
The guy is on the edge of another lip which goes further down, I couldn’t see the bottom from my position but it may be they are taking out another layer – with the ‘green thing’ being used to drill holes to place charges. I’ll have to see if I can find out if that is so, and whether I can get there when they ‘press the button’.
Hi Stephen, I am happy to let you know that I have nominated your blog for the Leibster Award! I will be posting details this weekend. Congratulations! Have a great weekend!
Hi wildlifewatcher. Thank you for your kind words. thank you for the thoughts behind your nomination, but I have to advise you that awards are really not my thing. I hope you don’t mind.
https://stephenhip.wordpress.com/awards/
such immence scaling. I fear the world will be swollowed up when quaries are this huge. Our thirst for super technology and ‘going green’ or for beautiful stone, has left its scars
Interesting point.
On the one hand I agree with you, on the other I can see that when they have finished doing thing, they will have created a whole new set of environments. I know that in similar places they now have Peregrine Falcons nesting.
Of course, in long term geological terms, man is only speeding up the inevitable movement of the stone/aggregate towards the sea – and ultimate creation of sedimentary rocks in the future.
I must also say, at this particular site, because of the nature of the terrain and their choice in hollowing out the middle of the hill, the site is practically invisible in the surrounding area.
What yo say is very true too. Wildlife will adapt eventually to mans ruin. However, I may be bleating a little, I use a computer, I use a digital camera, i consume full stop. A lot have holes dug out for our wonderful technology, we can record what we do. Truly the picture is and excellent demonstration of the scale we do things, and the lines of the quarry are in there own right artistically created by man. Glad to see that the peregrine’s are making a come back. Sheffield has its own family of peregrines near the University, on top of a church. š
nice sense of scale there!
Thank you!
Just further on your comment to ArtyAnge above, the old lime and granite quarries up here have all been reclaimed by nature, in less than a century; in one case, less than 40 years. I mean what looks to me to be a near-complete return: forests, ponds (fish, frogs, the works), wildlife all over the place — the quarries now are barely discernible, and you have to be an avid hiker to visit them.
Even Chernobyl is a forest now; the wildlife there is different than it had been, but it is adapting in a way humans probably can’t.
Certainly we’re making the earth uninhabitable for *ourselves*. I try to live as “clean and green” a life as I can, because I like humans, but I think nature always wins; she’ll breath a huge sigh of relief once humans are gone, and get back to running things as they should be.
š
Gravel pits that are turned into fishing lakes usually return fairly quickly – a lake is only a hole in the ground after all. And if we watch the right nature programmes on tv they will tell us that life quickly returns to the devastation caused by volcanoes and new volcanic islands have a relatively short ‘naturalisation’ period, so I guess we shouldn’t be surprised.
When I visit abandoned airfields, I have ceased to be surprised at the power of nature in tearing up the concrete and breaking through walls.
I’m afraid, despite man’s feelings of grandeur and power over the planet, in the grand scheme of things, we are an insignificance in the landscape.
š Yes, indeed!