Slightly-less-urban flotsam

The waterfall at Monsal Dale. About as natural as a lilo

The North. Subject of much sarcastic writings by non-northerners and the origin of a great many great friends (and a good deal of my further education). 

Urban walks should, by definition, take place somewhere filled with wifi,
traffic jams or the occasional quiet stabbing. Yet a recent jaunt to Yorkshire showed me you can still get incredibly man- made flotsam in a place where you wouldn't expect it.  

Endcliffe park. Has had the builders in

 An at-times vertiginous but rather lovely yomp around Monsal Dale threw up the old bridges and abandoned railway lines you might expect from a part of the world with such a rich industrial past. 


What was more unusual was that someone had gone to the effort of creating a lovely waterfall in the middle of somewhere already rather lovely.

Bricks in the riverbed for
that jacuzzi effect

  
Later on in Hunter's Bar - a cracking bit of Sheffield that doesn't boast the kind of natural beauty that the Peak District never stops going on about - the home-made waterfalls continued with gusto.

 
Wandering through Endcliffe park, there were at least half a dozen brazenly man-made waterfalls of one sort and another. Paths were thrown alongside - and sometimes over - the stream supplying them with H2O. 

I wondered: did it matter that these supposedly natural features were entirely unnatural? Was the pleasant sight and sound of them undercut by the fact they came from a desire by the Victorians  to jazz the place up a bit? Certainly no-one else having a crisp January walk that day seemed bothered.

In the end, neither was I.

Fake but fab