Sunday 13 December 2015

If You Go Down To The Woods Today,

beware of the Stride,


between Barden Tower and Bolton Abbey in Yorkshire, England, lies one of nature's most dangerous booby traps, it’s a small innocuous-looking mountain stream, about six feet across, known as Bolton Strid, or simply the Strid, but below the water's surface is a deep chasm with powerful undercurrents that pulls anybody that falls into it to certain death, it is believed that not a single person who has fallen into this part of the Strid has ever come out of it alive, 

one supposed victim of the Strid was young William de Romilly, the son of Lady Alice de Romilly, who attempted to leap across the Strid in 1154 and perished, His mother was so grieved by her loss that she donated the surrounding land to establish the Bolton Priory monastery, this tragic legend was later immortalised by William Wordsworth in his poem “The Force of Prayer”, to understand why this part of the River Wharf is so dangerous is the fact that the 30 foot wide or so river constricts to just a few feet across, making the river fast, powerful and dangerous, the surrounding banks have been seriously undercut by the river, going down to depths that have yet to be discovered, regrettably it's last victim Aaron Page was aged only 8 years old when in 2010 he was drowned, condolences to the family and a warning to all that not everything in the countryside is as it seems.


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