Anglezarke Moor
During the mini heatwave I started exploring the moors around Anglezarke a bit more. This was mostly because I didn't have the energy to hike up to the moors from lower ground such as White Coppice or Brinscall and could just drive up to the edge of the open moor at Anglezarke and then walk a short distance over relatively flat ground to get out into, what at least felt like, remote places.
With the heatwave passed and a return to normality (i.e. <20C temps, overcast skies, the constant threat of rain, you know, standard summer weather here in the Northwest of England) I decided to explore more deeply into this little patch of moorland, approaching places I've visited many times before, such as Round Loaf, but from a different starting point and getting a bit more insight into how these places knit together.
This set was taken on two separate walks around broadly the same area, both starting and ending near Jepsons Gate farm.
All images taken handheld with the Fujifilm GFX100S and 35-70 or 100-200 lenses (yes, my lens collection has doubled! My bank balance has been less fortunate). Processed from single raw files in Capture One Pro 23.
1. Jepsons Gate
I've been half heartedly searching for Jepsons Gate for a while now. It's labelled on the OS maps close to Pikestones, but its exact location isn't shown. Having recently found a blog containing grid coordinates for the site, I dropped a marker into my Garmin, ready for the next time I would be walking in the area. Sure enough, having walked past Pikestones and out onto the open moor, then following a vague trod across the moor in the general direction I arrived at the spot marked by this neat and tidy cairn. Finding information on Jepsons Gate is a bit like pulling hens teeth, so at this point I still have no idea what the significance of the site is or its relationship to other ancient sites on the moors such as the nearby Pikestones and the slightly more distant Round Loaf. I don't even know if it's "Jepsons Gate" or "Jepson's Gate" i.e. whether the name is possessive or not. One thing I do know is there's definitely not a gate there, just a pretty modern looking and well maintained cairn that appears to change its design from time to time, judging by other pictures I've seen.