Keith Bennett Walk 2

One Sunday I drove across to the Wessenden Valley and parked up on a small expanse of dirt looking down a deep valley. Always hungry for peanut-butter sandwiches and frothy coffee I sat in the car next to another. For fifteen minutes I observed the woman in the next car. About 60 with salon-finished hair she sat in an expensive Mercedez with the window down. Opera drifted out of the window.

She rubbed her forehead a few times and looked solemn. I thought I’d go an have a chat with her and hoped she wasn’t about to drive over the edge (it could ruin the car.) She said he lived in Meltham but felt ill and had come out “to get some fresh air” (did she not have a back garden?) She had a right parting in her hair which isn’t that common. Her engagement ring was shiner than her wedding ring.

Her spirits lifted a bit. I think she was just glad someone spoke to her. She told me all about her sister’s interest in the Moors Murders (there were photos of the missing lad Keith Bennett on the fence opposite (see photo "Wessenden Valley 11") and I told her all about my interest in graves. She turned off the opera CD and her back straightened and we discussed graves and stuff. I even gave her my card containing my website details. I chatted to her for so long my back was getting cold so I said goodbye and headed down to the reservoirs.

As it’s been a dry summer water levels were low. In that valley there is a staircase of reservoirs which eventually feed Marsden (Where The Heart Is was filmed there.) I’m not keen on deep water but thought I would venture down to it and do a full lap of the main reservoir. Brick gave way to spongy soil and close to the water huge clumps are earth collapsed almost dragging me in. It reminded me of being in the sea and walking up to the legs and the sand suddenly shifts underfoot and drags you (heart-in-the-mouth stuff.)

I found a triangular shaped stone and have brought it come to do something creative with it. It was too bulky for my pocket so I walked for a while with it on my head. When I’d eventually got around the reservoir (crossing hidden steams bleeding into it) I opened a bit of tin foil and had some walnut cake. It was so good I licked the foil for scraps. Not as good as the bombers that came over. I passed a man with a squarish face and rigger boots and when he spotted my camera he said, “Keep it ready for the bombers.” Not too far away is the Lady Bower Reservoir when the bouncing bomb was tested and there was a display going on. Square Head said Lancaster Bombs, helicopters and two Spitfires were due to fly passed. He was partly right as soon enough two Lancaster Bombs flew by.

There was a pheasant or grouse clacking away loudly in some bushes, probably bird parlance for “Get lost, sucker!” so I did. Eventually I returned to the car park and the woman who’d been listening to opera had been replaced by a man in a Ford Escort sat listening to rap music (so loud it was almost blowing the doors off.) He needed shooting and rolling down into the reservoir poisoning the air like that but he was a 19+ stone dripping wimp so I let him off.

Taken in 2020...