Baslow-Chatsworth House-Edensor-Hassop and Bank Wood

25.6.14
Walking with; Nobody

   Over the years I have acquired a fair number of different walking books describing routes for many different parts of the country. In recent times I have mostly devised my own routes and derived great pleasure from it, but once in a while I find myself thinking "Why bother inventing the wheel" and dig one of the dusty guide books out form the shelf on which they languish. The one I laid hands on this week was by Mark Reid, author of "The Inn Way" series who hit on the genius idea of producing books combining excellent walks with excellent pubs....sounds like a decent job to me! After a perusal of his "Walking weekends Peak District" I decided that I'd head over to Baslow and do his 10.5 miler taking in the Chatsworth estate and some of the Peak District's most picturesque villages.
   Leaving the village green at Nether End I crossed Bar Brook and followed a resplendent male Pheasant along the path towards the Chatsworth estate. The estate is a fine example of an English stately home, vast swathes of grassland populated by magnificent mature trees and grazing herds. The landscaping was done by "Capability" Brown and the house itself was built in the late 17th Century and is still the home of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire today. Passing Queen Mary's bower, one of the oldest buildings on the estate named after Mary, Queen of Scots who was imprisoned at Chatsworth I crossed the Derwent and headed towards the hamlet of Edensor. If an American tourist were to describe a picture perfect English village they'd be hard pressed to describe something other than Edensor. It's a collection of beautiful stone built cottages clustered around a parish church and village green. The gardens are immaculate, vegetables and flowers adding colour to the picture and in the June sunshine it was the quintessence of Englishness. I reluctantly climbed out of the village passing a couple of dry stone wallers and dropped down Handley Lane towards Pilsley.
   A little further on I came to Hassop and the 17th century pub "The Eyre Arms" http://www.eyrearms.com/ where a pint of "Palerider" in front of the hanging baskets seemed like too good an opportunity to miss. The path leading through Bank Woods South and North was very overgrown but I picked my way through the grass led by Red Admirals and Wrens and enjoying views of Longstone Edge before dropping down to Calver. Negotiating a herd of slightly frisky cattle I made it back to the banks of the Derwent and from there cut through St Mary's Wood before dropping through Bubnell and emerging back by the old bridge in Baslow and returning along the road from there. This was a beautiful route through the kind of English countryside long dreamed off by visitors to the UK. Beautiful villages, wild flower meadows, dry stone wallers and birds and butterflies, a decent pub and the sun even managed to shine! Good work Mark Reid.

To view the full album please click on the link below;
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.916405638375391.1073741869.597048676977757&type=3&uploaded=17 
  

Bradshaw to The Strawbury Duck for Sunday lunch (and back again!)

18.8.13
Walking with; Ruthy, Paul, Jen, Emily and Kate

There can be few better ways to spend a Sunday than a gentle stroll in the Summer sunshine to a country pub with a bunch of good friends. I knew nothing of this area before yesterday, my experiences of the Bolton area being confined to playing various games of rugby there over the years, however by the time you reach Bradshaw the urban sprawl dissipates and rolling countryside opens out before you.
We set off from the houses on the site of the old Bradshaw Bleach works and were soon making our way through the Bradshaw Bottoms woodland, following the stream past old quarries and squelching through the occasional puddle until we hit the Jumbles Reservoir, an impressive body of water dotted with sailing boats and Canada Geese and sparkling in the sunshine. I like reservoir walking, the going underfoot is usually easy and walking by bodies of water always adds something to a ramble. There were plenty of wildflowers and birds flitting in and out of the foliage and it felt a shame to leave the shelter of the canopy and emerge in the cluster of houses. We climbed up through Turton before heading off along the path flanking our second reservoir of the day, Wayoh. The reservoir was completed in 1876 and is one of the two main sources of drinking water for the Bolton area. Along the path there were Wild Raspberries, Heather and plenty of Rose Bay Willow Herb and there were Cormorant, Canada Geese and Mallard on the water. We eventually wound our way up the hill and there before us like a welcome mirage loomed the welcoming sight of "The Strawbury (sic) Duck", a pub that as a group we can heartily recommend for treats including Potted Duck, Roast Beef and Cod and Chips, not to mention friendly staff and good beer....well worth the effort!
Replete and in need of walking off a few calories we retraced our steps back along the reservoirs and woodland paths to Bradshaw safe in the knowledge we'd had a Sunday well spent!

Aira Force and Dockray

31.3.13
Walking with; Rich

After a couple of weeks of indolence as a result of a rugby obtained knee injury it felt good to be out and about even on the gentlest of ambles. I was in the Lakes on a stag do staying at the fantastically appointed Blencathra Centre, in the shadow of the eponymous hill and with magnificent vistas of snow capped peaks. The stag and less injured parties were off scrambling in ghylls and via ferrata-ing, so it was left to me and Rich (hobbled by a hip injury) to enjoy a perambulation of a less demanding sort.
  Wordsworth writes in his poem "The Somnambulist", "Wild stream of Aira, hold thy course" and the falls are mentioned in two further works of his. They are certainly a popular spot and easily accessible from the Ullswater road. The name is believed to come from the Nordic "eyrara" meaning "gravel-bank stream" with the word force (or sometimes foss) being a commonly used term for waterfall. The land is now owned by the National Trust but was developed as a pleasure garden by the Howard family in the eighteenth century who landscaped the area around their hunting lodge. The two bridges are dedicated to members of the Spring-Rice family and are popular photo spots.
Our car park provided good views of Ullswater and the snowy hills beyond and we descended the gentle path through the pine arboretum before crossing the stream and climbing slowly up the other side of the valley.  The view of the falls from below is spectacular and was enhanced by the icicles and frozen spray decorating the surrounding rocks. We continued, following the river, until we eventually reached the tiny hamlet of Dockray for a pint of "hair of the dog" in the very attractive "Royal Hotel". It was a simple matter of following the road back to the car then and whilst four ambled miles might not represent my most challenging walk, it felt could to be back out in the countryside once more, and even more pleasingly, the knee held up pretty well!

To view the full album please click on the link below;
  https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=oa.364297450355833&type=1

Tideswell and the Seven Dales

22.2.12

Walking with; Nobody

This was the first proper outing for the knee since the operation in mid-January and it passed it with a few creaks and groans. Tideswell is famous for the Church of St.John the Baptist which is so impressive in scale it has been named "The Cathedral of the Peaks". It was built during the latter half of the 14th Century on the site of an old Norman chapel (parts of which were incorporated into the current building). Sir Samson Meverill, who fought against Joan of Arc, is buried in a magnificent tomb in the chancel and also laid to rest there is Bishop Robert Purseglove who became rich during Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries and whose estate still pays a small stipend to Tideswell school to this day. It's well worth a visit and a handy spot to get out of the rain. The village is also famous for a fantastic bakery, "Tindall's of Tideswell", one of the best refuelling stops in the area.

I left the village with the rain coming down and headed through Tideswell Dale, the site of an old basalt quarry with sculptures along the flat, pleasant riverside trail. There is an avenue of magnificent Beech trees and there were plenty of finches and long-tail tits darting in and out of the vegetation. The path continued into Miller's Dale and the picturesque hamlet of Litton Dale. The original mill sited there was notorious for the conditions in which the indentured "apprentices", usually children from the work house, were required to work, but the hamlet now has an air of gentility with woodsmoke curling from the chimneys of the stone cottages.

Leaving Litton Dale, the path climbed through woodland before crossing The Monsal Trail and continuing a steep ascent into Priestcliffe Lees Nature Reserve. The paths were wet and muddy restricting the pace of progress and making a coffee perched on some old lead workings with a view of the valley below a welcome respite......until the rain came again. I pressed on to another tiny farming hamlet called Brushfield, now mostly holiday lets by the look of things but with some beautiful snowdrops in the woods. The path continued on above Taddington Dale, a densely wooded valley, before dropping down to rejoin The Monsal Trail at the spectacular eponymous viaduct which has great views of the River Wye and Monsal Dale and on a better day would have been ideal for some lunch. I followed The Monsal Trail for about a mile, it runs along the route of an old Midland Railways line (complete with tunnels), passing the ghostly abandoned platform of Monsal Dale station before leaving it at the Cressbrook tunnel and dropping down to Cressbrook Mill at the head of Hay Dale. The mill is now a very smart conversion, but the mill-race still flows alongside the footpath and it isn't hard to imagine it in it's prime producing textiles for Richard Arkwright and, later, McConnel and Co.

The rain was coming down even harder now so the relative shelter afforded by the woodland in Cressbrook Dale was a welcome relief. Cressbrook is evidence that the rain is not an occasional visitor here. Every surface of wall, tree, root, even the ground itself is covered in lush, spongy, vivid green moss and it gives the wooded dale a distinctly Middle Earth feel to it. Leaving the woodland I followed the river up the valley before crossing the stepping stones and climbing the short, steepish ascent through Tansley Dale, home of more abandoned lead workings, to be met with spectacular views of the area. Dry stone walling is still a craft much in evidence in this part of the world and the fields are neatly parcelled up by some fantastic examples of this slowly dying art.

Last stop before Tideswell was Litton, a picture perfect village with a green, characterful cottages and a pub, The Red Lion, that was such a perfect approximation of a country inn that it would have been criminal to pass it by, so I didn't. Log fires, quiet, relaxed atmosphere and a pint of "BG Sips" gave me the fortitude to head off on the last mile of my journey back to Tideswell and a visit to the bakery..

To view the full photo album for this walk, please click on the link below

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