gritstrike

The gritstrike was first documented by a fell runner who came off Stanage Edge in November with both boots missing and no memory of the descent. She said she'd seen a figure on the ridge ahead of her, standing where the path narrows between the trig point and the overhang. She assumed it was another walker. She kept going. When she woke up she was at the bottom of the crag face with heather in her teeth. I have since observed three specimens patrolling the edges between Stanage and Burbage. They walk the same route, always. The same stones, the same pace, the same direction. I timed one over six hours and it never varied by more than a second per circuit. They do not deviate. They do not rest. They do not acknowledge each other when their routes cross. The gritstrike does not hunt. It occupies. The edges are narrow and the drops are real. If you are on its path, it walks through where you are standing. The gritstone plates on its lower legs are scarred and chipped -- not from combat, but from decades of the same footfalls on the same rock. Its feet have worn grooves into the stone that match its stride exactly. The head is difficult to observe at close range for obvious reasons. The wide-set eyes give it peripheral vision spanning nearly 340 degrees. The sealed mouth has led some to speculate it does not feed at all, but subsists on the edge itself -- on wind, on exposure, on the slow erosion of millstone grit. I am not sure this is wrong. Do not walk the edges after dark. If you must, step off the path when you hear scree shifting in rhythm. Let it pass. It is not interested in you. You are simply in the way.

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