Boots Across Britain: Return To Mossdale

St Mary's Church, Conistone

Mid-November saw us spend a weekend in Grassington, and renew acquaintance with Mossdale Scar. A very gloomy weekend, the thick cloud cover meant darkness was looming even as early as 2pm. We took the opportunity to visit the Mossdale Tragedy memorial at St Mary's church in Conistone, and to find the other memorials at the Scar itself.

St Mary's Churchyard. The Mossdale memorial is on the left.

Looking from the churchyard towards Conistone Dib and, beyond the hill, Mossdale

Shafts of light breaking through

Unfortunately in the latter we were unsuccessful, failing to find the plaque next to the "New Entrance" (or indeed the entrance itself). Regarding the memorial cairns, it would appear the one marking the spot where deep below five of the cavers were found has collapsed. I couldn't see the small metal plaque attached (I didn't turn over any of the stones to look as I didn't want to disturb it), but according to the map this was the only cairn in the vicinity so must have been it. The heather all around was scorched by burning, I don't know if this had contributed to the collapse or not. I presume given the harsh conditions up here the cairn must crumble fairly regularly, requiring regular maintenance. Given its proximity to a gravel track it is surprising that an attempt to make the cairn more permanent by driving some cement up hasn't been made.

The collapsed cairn above Mossdale Scar. Is this the one marking the spot below which five of the bodies were found?

The second cairn - marking where the sixth body was found?
Rapidly failing daylight and the threat of a storm meant we couldn't loiter to investigate too long and had to beat a fairly hasty retreat, though it was still over two hours before we got back to Grassington. We passed a second cairn positioned next to the gravel track leading home, presumably marking above where the sixth missing caver's body was found a day after the other five.