The Roosdyche - chariot racing in Derbyshire

Whether the Roosdyche, a sort of half natural, half man made stadium hidden from the public gaze on the hills above Whalley Bridge, on the A6 between Chapel en le Frith and Buxton, was ever used for Roman charioteers to practise their prowess, is difficult to say.

What is certain is that the place is difficult to find, but made slightly less so by a light fall of snow that picks out the edges and the sides of what must have been a magnificent spot back in the days before an arm of the Peak Forest Canal came into the town below, before the reservoirs were built further up the Goyt Valley, with migrating ospreys, down from the Boat of Garten on their way to the Algarve, resting on the branches of a dead tree while a hundred eager, binoculared amateur ornithologists watch avidly and quietly.

The Roosdyche would have been a popular spot with tourists of an entirely different era, resting and having some sport as they traversed this new part of their domain.

Much, much later, Rudyard Kipling wrote his famous Roman Centurion's Song, in which a centurion is called back to Rome, having spent half his life in Britain. "Command me not to go," the Centurion pleads.

The lure of the smell of bracken in the wet was great even in those times. It is still a pull on my heart strings.

Robert L. Fielding