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This picture will be familiar to everyone visiting Alderley from the East. This road sign has been in that familiar  thick post and clear black and white style as long as I can remember and it's nice to see that it has not been replaced by more modern, flimsy and prosaic road signs that we are all familiar with. I assume it once pervaded more widely but I associate it entirely now with the Cheshire countryside.

This is the map that greats you from the car park near the visitors centre, all things considered it's all still remarkably undeveloped and would elsewhere have been turned into something ghastly like the "Alan Garner Experience" Still the near complete lack of reference to the author and and his book seems a little perverse.

Nearby is the Wizard Inn which is included in the Weirdstone, though in those days children were kept firmly out of Pubs, something which in the modern era has changed, and in my view is certainly not an improvement, speaking of which: "The Wizard Inn" which is named in the book and has been called that as long as anyone can remember, has been horribly re-badged as "The Wizard of Edge" - I mean just who the devil comes up with these inane ideas? In any money the old name is far superior, idiots!

As famous as the Wizard Inn and heavily featured in the book (it's one of the first references to the Wizard which gains the children's interest), is the Wizard's Well. Now where the Inn has gone too far in plastic commercialisation this has gone the other way. It's poorly signposted and as can be seen is in danger of being lost completely to moss. You'll have to click and expand the picture to gain the best impression, but if you look upper mid-right you should be able to pick him out. Supposedly one of Alan Garner's forebears carved this and in any other country it would be quite a feature, but that is as nothing compared to Cleulow Cross as you will shortly find out. It seems to me that there has to be some kind of achievable balance between turning history and culture into a Disney experience with the obligatory Big Mac and just letting it slip away into oblivion.

Ok back to the book, the children - Colin & Susan - are warned about the mines and it is indeed from out of them the first real threat comes namely the goblin race the Svart's (as a kid I always thought that sounded collectively like trouble with digestive gasses). This picture, while not of the supposed location of the Svart warren, gives a fair picture of how obvious to this day the mine workings remain.

Stormy Point is a key location in the book and indeed where nearly all paths on The Edge eventually lead. Like all panoramic views it's not at all easy to capture in a two dimensional photograph, best bet is just to visit it. What was great was that the day we went there England were playing Sweden in the World Cup (for my American friends that's soccer, you know the game woman play in your country and is the national game of most of the rest of the planet, by the way your men did quite well as it happened). The consequence was that other then the very old and the mentally infirm we had the place to ourselves which in May would normally be unheard of, it was great! And no neither category applies to us.

Ok these are the classic locations, however as I alluded to above you have to travel into deepest, darkest Cheshire to catch the real essence of where the book reaches it's terrible climax.