Blue Remembered Hills

Torside Reservoir today

Youth hosteling with the school, aged 10.
Youth hosteling with the school, aged 10 (colour added from memory in Photoshop!)

Driving over the bridge at Torside Reservoir brought back memories of my first impressions of hill country.

One Sunday in February 1961 we drove over Holme Moss and down into Longdendale, alongside the reservoir to visit my grandad who was in a nursing home in Cheadle Hulme, Cheshire (now Greater Manchester).

torside reservoir

hikerIn my drawing, I rearranged the landscape to tell a story; in reality the dam is a mile to the west of the bridge. I like those little details: two hikers, a figure throwing a ball for a dog and a train trundling along the Sheffield to Manchester line, which ran through the Woodhead Tunnel.