If like me you started riding mountain bikes around the late 80’s early 90’s and live & rode in the Rossendale Valley you’ll have no doubt seen Crustyman was here graffiti all over the place especially on stiles and gates. The biggest ‘tag’ was under the M66 bridge.
I never knew who Crustyman was until he was involved in an armed siege with the police in 2005 when he killed himself and i finally read about him.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/gunman-in-siege-after-pc-shooting-549147

You can still see the word bobcap and the arrow pointing to the old tag.

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He rode a Specialized apparently!

I remember seeing his name in a few places but the one under the bridge was the one i saw most.I never saw that he had killed himself or had i any clue who he was.We always rode that trail down by the river on our way to do the rake/peel tower but seem to remember it got pretty crappy so we gave up.I will be back in the valley this summer on my new 29er with fox fork and tubeless wheels a far cry from what we rode then when you only needed a bobcap for protection.Great post.
Ben

Nice bit of local history that.

I’d seen his tags around the ‘Plunge’ area of Edenfield when I was riding my old Raleigh klunker dad built ‘mtb’ but then when I bought my 1st real mtb (1991/92 GT Timberline) and started riding further afield it annoyed me that his tags were everywhere I was exploring and this guy had beaten me to these places!