Keith’s bench is my favourite place to sit on Penistone Hill. I didn’t know Keith, but from the carved dedication, I know that these moors were his playground — so in that respect, we’re kindred spirits.

This Wayfinder introduces the pond’s two principal visitors. Walking Penistone Hill on weekdays, I noticed how popular this area is with dog walkers. Often, I would be the only person around without a canine companion. Watching them splash about, my mind wandered to the infamous black dog of the moor, the shape-shifting Barghest or Gytrash that haunts lonely roads and leads travellers astray. One makes a memorable appearance in Jane Eyre, the first time we meet Mr Rochester:

I heard a rush under the hedge, and close down by the hazel stems glided a great dog, whose black and white colour made him a distinct object against the trees.  It was exactly one form of Bessie’s Gytrash — a lion-like creature with long hair and a huge head: it passed me, however, quietly enough; not staying to look up, with strange pretercanine eyes, in my face, as I half expected it would.  The horse followed — a tall steed, and on its back a rider.  The man, the human being, broke the spell at once.  Nothing ever rode the Gytrash: it was always alone; and goblins, to my notions, though they might tenant the dumb carcasses of beasts, could scarce covet shelter in the commonplace human form.  No Gytrash was this —only a traveler taking the short cut.

I love how this passage plays with the residual wild in the domestic. Jane later tells Rochester that his land is “neither wild nor savage enough” for supernatural beings, but I’m not so sure.

I wasn’t lucky enough to meet the pond’s second set of visitors during my summer to autumn residency, but I’m reliably informed that in the spring, when the conditions are just right, it’s teaming with toads! After overwintering in burrows in the ground, they migrate back to the pond as the weather warms up to reproduce.