Bartimaeus

Sheffield is famous for steel. When we visited many years ago with young children, we enjoyed a visit to an interactive science centre built in an old steelworks. It must have been hot and tiring working in the steel industry, and dangerous too, like many factories of the time, and those working there would not have had much pay or savings to pay for medical care when they needed it, and steel workers suffered from breathing difficulties.

I was surprised to find that the event that my Sheffield friends were attending the next day was a moorland walk. Benny invited us to join him to cycle there, though he gave us due warning it was uphill. We aren’t frequent cyclers these days so we wondered how we would manage. We spent a good deal of time in bottom gear but the scenery was lovely as we got into woodland and up to the reservoirs. The walk had been organised by the union that I am a member of, Unite (a retired member), and I didn’t even know it had a community membership. It was one of many things I learnt that day.

I hadn’t realised that last year Sheffield had suffered a surge in pollution from the smoke of heather burning for the grouse shooting industry. The local population suffered ill effects while not benefitting from employment or being able to afford to take part. Not that I would want to take part. I admit to killing blood sucking creatures like a mosquito – parasites are not your friends – but otherwise killing animals for fun does not appeal. The walk was attractive and I learnt how a snare works and that they are illegal in Scotland and Wales, but still allowed in England.

We enjoyed a friendly picnic. Heather had made us sandwiches and we had brought fruit. I was planning to get out some digestive biscuits when we were offered far superior treacle flapjacks. They would certainly fuel us home and of course there was quite a lot of downhill so our wheels fairly whizzed on the way back.

On Monday I went in search of a Post Office. There are fewer of these than my map thought. Other parcel services are available, but they were marked as post offices on my map so it was a longer walk than anticipated. We then walked to Heather’s for lunch and then went on a walk through to Forge Dam. The mill legacy has left a pretty woodland walk and park by the river and we had a great view of a kingfisher. 

The next day the museums were open and we went to see some of Sheffield history at the Kelham Island museum. There was plenty to see and some of it was enormous, like the steel pressing machine, though it wasn’t running when we were there another smaller one was. It was a monster and made strips of steel inches thick to armour plate ships. Other industries such as tobacco were also on display – another industry guaranteed to produce breathing and health hazards.