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The buses are called Witch Way, because they run all the way from Manchester to the heart of Pendle witch country, which is Nelson, all the buses are decorated with this huge logo of a witch framed by the full moon, I shot this from my seat inside the bus I was on just before it set off for Clitheroe.

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It almost appears that the moon is not attached to the bus. It's almost like it's floating.

True, but then again there's magic in the air. Who needs buses anyway (well up there) when they can fly around on broomsticks.

 It's amazing how stories with some truth can get blown way out if proportion. Say a long time ago there was a creepy lady who stayed to herself was the subject of gossip floating through town, and as the talk progressed through the town it got more and more outrageous. It soon turned into a story about a lady with a nose the size of a football, who stirs giant pots of green goo, and then goes out for ride on a stick.

It usually was, they knew about herbal cures and remedies, would be like the local pharmacist, but then vwhen things went wrong and something inexplicable went wrong, who was to blame, there was always this little old woman.

However, all these buses are named after the two feuding families who came to be known as the Lancashire witches, here's the story in brief, and the countryside around Pendle has been associated with witches ever since, and the whole thing has been commercialised into a tourist industry ever since.

In 1612, forty years before the English civil war, 9 people were hanged for witchcraft, close to the present site of Nightingale Hall Farm (many say the stench of death lingers there still!).

In March 1612, young Alison Device (pro. deviss) was walking the road to Colne begging. She asked a pedler, John Law, of Halifax to open his pack, and when he refused, cursed him. Wherupon he collapsed with a stroke and was carried, half-paralysed, to a local hostelry, claiming he was bewitched. His son, Abraham Law, sought out Alison, and brought her to his father's bedside. She freely confessed she had cursed him, and apologised for doing him harm.

She was then taken to Roger Nowell, at Lancaster, who was the Crown Prosecution Service of the time. Not only did Alison confess to being a servant of Satan, but so did her mother, Elizabeth Device, and her mother, 'Old Demdyke'. All the accused were held at Lancaster Castle in the cells of the 'Witches' Tower', where Mother Demdyke, being aged, died awaiting trial.

According to the trial records, copies of which are held at Lancaster Library, the confessions and the conviction were not related to the popular understanding of witchcraft as the belief system based on Wicca but detailed the worship of 'Satan', a deviancy specific to the patriarchal religions originating with the prophet Abraham. However ancient clay 'egyptian' effigies found at Malkin Towers, Pendle, through the evidence of Alison's 9 year old sister might lead one to speculate that the 'confessions', based mainly as they were on the evidence of children, owed more to what the prosecution wanted to hear than what the illiterate Demdykes, who were not allowed a defence at their trial, had to say.

Interestingly, one of the charges brought against Old Demdyke was that she had failed to heal a cow when she was supposed to.

Local legend has it that the nine executed, being refused burial in the town cemetery, were interred in the old Quaker cemetery. If so, there can be few resting places more peaceful and lovely.

However, George Fox, principle founder of the Quaker movement, did not experience his inspirational vision on Pendle Hill until 40 years later. Possibly the site, being just a few yards outside the old city boundaries, was originally used as the burial ground for executed heretics, and others not deemed worthy of burial in consecrated ground. This may have been the same land later purchased by the Society of Friends and made into an enclosed and secluded garden.

Interesting history.

Wow, you sure now a lot about this subject.