Holme Moss

We're having a long weekend in Macclesfield to visit Mum-in-Law in her care home, and my Editor's aunt in hospital: her aunt hasn't been too well recently and fell at home earlier in the week. Happily this evening we found them both in reasonable spirits in the circumstances.

We decided to ring the changes with regard to our driving route here, trying with only partial success to avoid the road works on Woodhead pass (I think we avoided some of them). This took us through "Last of the Summer Wine" country (if you know of that long-running BBC tv series, now finished), including Holmfirth where it was filmed (although we didn't have time to stop to find the actual locations used).

I took these photos at the summit of Holme Moss, 1719 feet above sea level on the Yorkshire/Derbyshire border. The landscape in the diptych is the rather splendid view from the top, looking back in the direction, I think, of Holmfirth. On the right, looking in the opposite direction from the landscape view, is the massive Holme Moss transmitting aerial, the highest in England. When erected it transmitted television signals that travelled much further than its intended service area, being received on the Isle of Man and in parts of the Irish Republic. It now provides VHF radio coverage for FM and digital radio to a wide area around the transmitter including Derbyshire, Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire. The FM signals operate at 250 kW from one of the most powerful transmitters in the country with reception available as far north as the Borders and as far south as Birmingham.

(I found the technical details on Wikipedia, and whilst looking there discovered that the Wiki page contains almost the same photos as I took. But I took mine before seeing the page, honest!!)