Carol based this walk on the The Angidy Trail leaflet. It provides a full description of the long industrial past of the valley, from oak bark collecting for the tanning trade, furnaces powered by charcoal for iron-making, water driven hammers for shaping iron into rods and then into wire. A lovely valley walk though woodland, past holding ponds and along the paths of old leats.

 

Chris was intrigued by a couple of Noon marks or dials at Chapel Grove. One is the common design of a wall-mounted noon mark, developed to synchronise clocks at solar midday. It was made by Alan Parker and uses a disk mounted above the engaving on the wall with a hole which forms the 'gnomen' indicating the current time. Since it is designated as a GMT Noon dial, it has been adjusted for the location since the sun is over 10 minutes late passing the meridian at this longitude (2° 41' West).

The other design is unusual. It shows three figure-of-eight analemmas (depicting the equation of time) for the 3 hours X1, XII and XIII (11,12 and 1pm). These allow visual interpolation to get a rough approximation of times around midday. The gnomen mark is showing a time about 2/3 of the way from XI to XII, 11.40am GMT or 12.40 BST, about the time we visited. It also shows the Zodical signs throughout the year in addition to the months. The upper line is the winter solstice, the lower the summer solstice and the red centre line shows the equinoxes. Nice work - wish I had a Southish-facing wall at home. Ihaven found any guidance on making a noon mark but these sources maybe useful :Building an analemmic sundial   Macmillan Hunter sundials   Analemmatic Sundial generator and the guru of sundials Kevin Karney Sadly the Analemma in Millenium Square is no longer working.