Talk:Clough Head

Is the Old Coach Road closed to motor vehicles?

An earlier version of this article claimed that use of the Old Coach Road by off-road vehicles “is currently prohibited”, citing the 2008 guide-book by Mark Richards.

I can find no reference to such a prohibition in Richards' chapter on Clough Head. In fact Richards speaks of watching "The now unwelcome four-wheel drivers forging along the Old Coach Road" (p52). Neither have I been able to find any clear reference to the legal status of the road in online sources.

So I have removed the claim for now. But can anyone clarify the legal status of the road, please, and cite a source for it?

Silence-is-infinite (talk) 16:16, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Is the hollow north of the summit a corrie?

There were several references in an earlier version of the article to a 'corrie' or a 'natural amphitheatre', wiki-linked to cirque. Although north-facing and with a steep back wall, the landform does not have the usual bowl-shape of an ice-sculpted corrie. Also, no corrie-forming glacier is shown in this location on the map of former glaciers which carved the corries of the Lake District, which is found on p 20 of D. G. Woodhall (2000), Geology of the Keswick District (Sheet Explanation of BGS Sheet E029), (British Geological Survey, Nottingham).

In editing the Topography section, I have therefore removed these references.

Silence-is-infinite (talk) 16:01, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Is Calfhow Pike a tor?

Of only marginal interest to this article, but the reference to Calfhow Pike as a tor is incorrect, and so I have replaced it with the term "a steep rocky pinnacle".

As a technical term, tor is found in geological works always with reference to granite tors, a landform that has been created through the un-roofing of granite rock that had previously been intruded into rocks beneath the surface. For example, see Arthur Holmes, Principles of Physical Geology, London: Thomas Nelson, 1965 (1944), p 615; Peter Toghill, Geology of Britain, Airlife Publishing, 2000, p 178, and Graham Park, Introducing Tectonics, Edinburgh: Dunedin Academic Press, 2012, p 42.

As a non-technical term, the word tor is sometimes applied to rocky outcrops on the summits of hills, but this usage seems to be confined to south west England, where the granite tors of Dartmoor are well known. Glastonbury Tor is one example.

Calfhow Pike is not a granite tor. It is actually a mass of dacite lava. And the word tor is not used in Cumbria, in spite of its possible Celtic origin. Calfhow (calf hill) from Old Norse kalfr, calf, and haugr, hill, is not a tor in Cumbria but a pike, from Old English pīc, a peak. To use a 'foreign' term from the other end of England adds nothing to the information being given, and probably misleads the reader because of the technical use of the term.

Silence-is-infinite (talk) 10:21, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Now removed reference to Calfhow Pike altogether, since it stands on the Great Dodd side of the coll and is covered by that article Silence-is-infinite (talk) 16:01, 11 June 2014 (UTC)