Scar House reservoir in Nidderdale is about 20 miles from where I live. It is massive! It is nearly 2000 ft. long and contains one million tons of stone. It took 15 years to build.
There were three resevoirs built in Nidderdale at the beginning of this century to provide the people of Bradford with fresh water and to power the mills, and Scar House is one of them. The others are Angram at the head of Scar House, and Gouthwaite lower down, although this one is mainly used to keep the river Nidd flowing. A huge pipe flows from the reservoirs to Bradford 30 miles away!
Last Summer my granddad and I decided to walk around Scar House reservoir. It is a walk of about 4 miles and part of the walk goes along the bottom of Dead Mans Hill. This hill gets its name from when 3 men were murdered here about 200 years ago by the landlady of a local pub and her daughter. The men had sold some cattle at market in one of the towns and were returning home with lots of money, when they were killed in their beds and then taken up the hill and had their heads cut off and their bodies buried. The women were caught and hung at nearby Pateley Bridge.
We set off on a really nice day and walked slowly around the reservoir and through some gates. We spent some time skimming stones in the water, and after awhile we stopped and had our lunch.
The walk is really nice and the countryside is wild. There were other people there, but we didn’t see too many.
Eventually we saw Angram dam in the distance, and it looked massive. It is almost as big as Scar House dam.
We eventually came to a large pipe coming from the bottom of the reservoir wall and we thought it would be fun to walk along it. It was very slippery and you could feel the water rushing through it!
At last we got to Angram dam and climbed up the slippery slope to the top. The views were fantastic, and we could see for miles and miles!
We walked back along a long road, and the walk was one of the best we had done.
The Mackenzie Way 