Geography
Saddleworth Moor straddles the metropolitan boroughs of Oldham in Greater Manchester and Kirklees in West Yorkshire. The moorland is an elevated plateau with gritstone escarpments or edges and, around its margins, deeply incised v-shaped valleys or cloughs with fast-flowing streams. (Clough is derived from the Old English cloh which means a deep valley or ravine.) The overlying peat is cut by drainage channels or groughs. The high moorland is sparsely inhabited. Scattered farmsteads, built of local gritstone, and fields demarcated by dry-stone walls are on the lower land and in the valleys where there is some coniferous woodland. Much of the area is open access land.
The landscape is traversed by an A road between the Greater Manchester Urban Area and the West Yorkshire Urban Area. The A635 road, known locally as the Isle of Skye road, passes across the moor taking its name from a former public house at Wessenden Head which was demolished after a fire. The Pennine Way arrives from the Wessenden valley to the north and crosses the moor on its ascent to Black Hill on Holme Moss to the south.
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