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The Pole Society is the delightful invention of a group of satirists who have taken to the internet to poke fun at Tripadvisor by championing the merits of a new tourist attraction in Gloucestershire’s Forest of Dean: the ‘Cinderford Rusty Pole’.
Standing alongside lush fields on Littledean Road, the pole has been praised for offering ‘a stark meditation on humankind’s impact on the natural world’. Giving it a five-star rating, one reviewer said: ‘As a highlight of my New Year, getting to touch the Cinderford Rusty Pole was an experience like no other. With beautiful scenic views, it was a spiritual moment for me; I felt connected to the Earth’. Other visitors commented on the significant solstice alignment with the distant Haresfield Beacon, imbued with the same mythic power as the Loch Ness monster, but easier to find.
Another review claims that it ‘ranks up among the Pyramids and the lost Incan city of Machu Picchu as one of the true wonders of the world’, but warned readers to ‘get there early to avoid the tour buses and pushy souvenir-sellers’.
This would not be the internet without a few dissenting voices: one critic argued with those who refer to this as a ‘pole’ when it is quite clearly a ‘pipe’. And one disappointed visitor from nearby Gloucester dismissed it as ‘just a sewer vent pipe – not even that unusual’. Such naysayers are in the minority, though, and most agree that ‘it’s not just a “stink pipe”: it’s the very heart and soul of Cinderford’.
It has its rivals, however. While the Cinderford Rusty Pole gets an average score of 4.5 based on 23 reviews, further north, the NatWest Hole in Ilkeston has a full five stars and 149 reviews. One enthusiast described experiencing a spiritual awakening as a result of visiting the Hole, and recommended ‘touching the hole to find your goal’ if your life is at a crossroads – advice that might prove difficult to follow since the Hole is in fact… a hole. Circular in shape, like a Chinese moon gate, it was designed, according to a NatWest spokeswoman, as ‘a safety feature so that people using the cash machine could see if anyone was lurking behind the wall’.
Further information: search for ‘Cinderford Rusty Pole’ or ‘NatWest Hole’ at http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk.
Images: Tripadvisor/DavoGregorious, CC BY-SA 4.0
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