Search Results : “Peak District”

Jul 072013
 

A brisk wind was hurrying from the north over Derbyshire, pushing grey clouds down the long valley of the River Wye.
First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window
picture picture picture picture picture picture picture picture picture picture picture picture picture picture picture picture
Facebook Link:
Looking back from the heights of Rowsleymoor Woods across the valley with its intense greens of pasture and hedges, the farther peaks topped with bushy spinneys under a sky of gunmetal grey and Chartres blue, I thought a palette of two or three colours could catch the whole scene.

A pair of mountain-bikers passed me, panting hard. I followed them across a common of peaty soil and pine trees cushioned with big tuffets of moss, and came out of the trees onto the wide green sheep walk of Calton Pastures. This open grassy upland looks more like the undulating, unfenced pastures of Eastern Europe than anything you’d expect to see in the compartmented farmlands of England. Alone in one corner stood an ornate gingerbread cottage with white bargeboard and elaborate window shutters – the Russian Cottage, built as a full-size copy of a model farmhouse given to the 6th Duke of Devonshire in 1855 by his good friend Czar Nicholas II, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias.

The Cavendish family, Dukes of Devonshire, are the power in the land hereabouts. Emerging from New Piece Wood I was overwhelmed by what must be the most striking of all views of their great mansion of Chatsworth House. The building rises beyond the River Derwent’s meadows, an enormous cube of windows and walls among formal gardens, its Emperor Fountain blasting a mare’s-tail jet of water a hundred feet into the air, the pepperpot domes of the 16th-century Hunting Tower rising among the trees beyond. Chatsworth owes a lot of its effect to the sombre wildness of the Peak District moors that back it to the east. A jewel of orderly civilisation in a wilderness setting was the effect that the 1st Duke of Devonshire was aiming for when he built the place in 1687-1707, and even today you can see exactly what he was after.

The 6th Duke was lucky to have the brilliant designer Joseph Paxton as his right-hand man in the mid-19th century when he rebuilt Edensor village just over the hill from the house (having cleared away the existing settlement because it was spoiling his view). I went to pay my respects at Paxton’s tomb behind St Peter’s Church; he lies a little down the hill from the Dukes that commissioned him to design their gardens and glasshouses and estate buildings. Then I went slowly back to Rowsley by way of the flat, wide and lovely meadows along the Derwent.

In 1849 Joseph Paxton designed a beautiful little station for a railway line that was to run up the Derwent valley past Chatsworth. The 6th Duke objected, the line was never built, and now Paxton’s station stands marooned among the retail outlets of Peak Village Shopping Centre in Rowsley – as fine a picture of Dignity and Impudence as you could hope to find.

Start: Walker’s Zone car park, Peak Village Shopping Centre, Rowsley, Derbyshire, DE4 2JE (OS ref SK 258660)

Getting there: Rowsley is on A6 Bakewell-Matlock road
Bus: ‘The Sixes’ (trentbarton.co.uk), Bakewell-Matlock; ‘Transpeak’ (highpeakbuses.com), Matlock-Buxton

Walk (9 miles, moderate, OS Explorer OL24): From Grouse & Claret Inn, right on A6 across bridge. Right up Church Lane (256658), which becomes stony lane. In 1¼ miles, at metal barrier, lane forks (244670). Take upward path to right of right-hand fork (BA, ‘Chatsworth’), following BAs through woods and across Calton Pastures for 1¼ miles to descend to wall at Calton Plantations (243286). Through gate; sharp right along wall (BA). In 200m bear left beside gate (244685). Cross pasture near Russian Cottage, following BA (‘Edensor, Chatsworth’). Through shank of New Piece Wood to gate (247689) and view of Chatsworth House. Half right to waymark post; ahead (YA) past Maud’s Plantation and aim for Edensor church spire.

From Edensor cross B6012 (251700); bear right on stony path to Palladian bridge (257702). Don’t cross, but turn right through meadows on Derwent Valley Heritage Way (DVHW). In nearly 1 mile, at mill ruin, right up bank to cross B6012 (258688); left past car park on path marked ‘Garden Centre, Calton Lees’, then minor road to Calton Lees. Left at junction (257682; ‘Rowsley’ fingerpost). By Calton Lees Cottage, left through gate (257680; ‘Rowsley’); follow wall, then DVHW arrows. At end of 2nd big meadow, right over stile (260667, DVHW); on to lane to Rowsley.

Lunch: Edensor Tea Cottage (01246-582315)

Accommodation: Devonshire Arms, Beeley, DE4 2NR (01629-733259; devonshirebeeley.co.uk)

Chatsworth House: chatsworth.org
www.ramblers.org.uk www.satmap.com www.LogMyTrip.co.uk

 Posted by at 15:39
Mar 302013
 

Snow flurries were scudding across the sedgy fell sides above Meltham as we started up Royd Lane towards the open moor.First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window
picture picture picture picture picture picture picture picture picture picture picture picture picture picture picture picture
Facebook Link:
This part of West Yorkshire, the very northernmost tip of the Peak District National Park, is centred in ‘Last of the Summer Wine’ country; but if Compo, Clegg and Foggy had been out and about today, they’d have needed their caps and comforters. This was the Yorkshire Moors at winter’s end – bleak, harsh and compelling.

Royd Lane gave way to Magdalen Road, a noble name for a rugged old horse track that hurdles the low hill between Meltham and the twin reservoirs of Marsden Clough. Moor farms stood hunched along the lane, their windowless backs to the weather – Fox Royd, Upper Royd, Ash Royd. A ‘royd’ is a piece of land cleared of its roots, stones and trees for agriculture, but a lot of the royd land on these hills is going back out of keeping. One by one the hill farms are being abandoned in the face of pickings too slim to survive on.

Curls of snow still lay in the lee of the stone walls. A stray bullock was wandering in the lane, but when he caught sight of us he plunged with a twang straight through a barbed wire fence and cantered off to join his chums.

Beyond the Holmfirth road we dropped into Marsden Clough by way of Springs Road, a walled track whose beautifully cut sandstone paving-slabs had been grooved to guide the wheels of quarry wagons. Down along Nether Lane the stone-built farmhouse stood empty, solid old dwellings each in its own strip of fields – Goodbent, Bartin and Greaves Head.

Our ancestors did not always build solidly and well. Before climbing out of Marsden Clough and on back to Meltham, we leaned on the wall and looked down over the twin waters of Bilberry and Digley Reservoirs. When the poorly constructed embankment of Bilberry Reservoir collapsed in February 1852, a fifteen-foot-high wall of water rushed down the valley and devastated Holmfirth, ‘throwing a four storey mill down like a thing of nought, tossing boilers about like feathers, and carrying amongst the wreck of houses, mills and other buildings, men, women and children.’

Rural tradition says that the cries of plovers are the lamentations of lost souls. The upper air was full of them today, wailing and piping us away from the lakes and that dark old tragedy.

START: Royd Road, off Holmfirth Road, Meltham HD9 4BE approx. (OS ref SE 104102)

GETTING THERE: Bus 335 (stottscoaches.co.uk, Holmfirth-Meltham), 911 (wymetro.com, Honley rail station-Meltham) to Royd Road bus stop (at foot of Royd Road)
Road – Royd Road is off B6107 Meltham-Holmfirth road on southern edge of Meltham.

WALK (6 miles, moderate, OS Explorer OL1, 288): Walk up Royd Road. In ½ mile pass Fox Royd; in 200m fork right (100094, ‘bridleway’ fingerpost), past Royd Farm and on for 1 mile to A635 (094078). Right; in 50m, left through gate, down track (Springs Road) for ⅔ mile. At gate with ladder stile (086073), don’t cross, but swing left along Nether Lane; follow it for ¾ mile past Goodbent Lodge and Bartin to Greaves Head farmhouse (098074). In another ½ mile, turn left (106075) up grassy lane, over stile by gate (yellow waymark). On up between walls to road (106077); left to cross A635 (103080); ahead for 1¾ miles along Harden Moss Road (track), then Royd Road to B6107.

LUNCH: Plenty of pubs/cafés in Meltham

ACCOMMODATION: Durker Roods Hotel, Meltham HD9 4JA (01484-851413; durkerroodshotel.co.uk)

INFO: Holmfirth TIC (01484-222444); yorkshire.com
www.ramblers.org.uk www.satmap.com www.LogMyTrip.co.uk
Click on Facebook “Like” link to share this walk with Facebook friends.

 Posted by at 01:26
Jul 022011
 

Where Staffordshire, Cheshire and Derbyshire rub up against one another, it’s beautiful walking country. Wild moors, steep little valleys, sparkling rivers, lonely sheep farms and villages – the western edge of the Peak District has them all.First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window
picture picture picture picture picture picture picture
Facebook Link:
We didn’t really know the area well, but we didn’t need to; a random jab of the thumb on the map alighted on the hilltop settlement of Flash, and we were in for an absolute treat of a walk.

In spite of its racy name, Flash is a modest place. In 1820 Sir George Crewe judged this moorland hamlet ‘dirty, bearing marks of Poverty, Sloth and Ignorance’. Nowadays the New Inn’s sign proudly proclaims it the ‘highest village pub in the British Isles, 1518 feet’. The views from here across the Staffordshire moors are immense, a curve of green meadows rising to sombre uplands of bracken and heather, their skyline broken by jagged, wind-sculpted sandstone tors.

This morning the sky raced blue and silver, trailing thick grey belts of rain. The wind shoved us impatiently away from Flash, scurrying us up and over Wolf Edge with its canted rock outcrop. A dip on a rubbly path through dark heather and we were skirting Knotbury Common where peewits creaked and tumbled like toy stunting planes. The road to high-perched Blackclough farm lay gleaming with water and humpy with rain-pearled sheep.

Blue sky now, glints of sun and a big boisterous wind. Huge grassy spoil heaps and an ancient industrial chimney marked the long-defunct colliery at Danebower. We dropped down the steep, winding valley of the infant River Dane, a lovely green dell with a flagstone path across rushy bogs, the hills tightly enclosing the river which sparkled and gushed over step-high falls it had shaped in its sandstone bed. By the twin bridges at Pannier’s Pool the Dane dashed in cascades through a miniature gorge, a perfect picnic spot.

We crossed the open moor, its walls as loosely assembled as Connemara stone walls, and came down to Gradbach bridge. A handsome cream-washed house with a circle of crocuses on the lawn; a Methodist chapel beyond, very plain and dignified; the stone-built bridge over the rushing river. Simple and perfect, this whole assembly.

Back through pony paddocks and sheep pasture where a Swaledale ram with tremendous curly horns followed us a good step of the way. Then a last stretch where the wind, now at our backs like a comrade rather than in our faces like a bully, pushed us all the way up the lane to Flash.

Start & finish: New Inn, Flash, Staffordshire SK17 0SW (OS ref SK 025671)
Getting there: At Rose & Crown, Allgreave (on A54 Buxton-Congleton), take side road (‘Quarnford’) to Flash.
Walk (8½ miles, moderate, OS Explorer OL24): With your back to the church, take lane that forks right past New Inn. In 150m, right (fingerpost, yellow arrow/YA) to pass houses; right (YA) up field, aiming for post. Continue over wall stiles (YAs). In ¼ miles, left (024676; YA) past stone outcrop and over Wolf Edge. Aim for fence; follow it down to road (020681). Left; in 100m, right up farm lane. Opposite Knotbury farm, right through gate (017682; fingerpost) on gravel track that bears left over Knotbury Common, down to road (015689). Left over cattle grid; up road past Blackclough farm. Follow track north beside wall for ½ mile to walk through Reeve-Edge and Danebower quarries. Descend to cross stream by stepping stones (014699; YA). Up bank and turn left (fingerpost, ‘Dane Valley Way’/DVW). Follow track nearly to road, then slant left downhill by chimney (010700). Path by River Dane (stiles, YAs, DVW) for ¾ mile to the two bridges at Pannier’s Pool (009685).

Here DVW crosses bridge; but you keep ahead on right bank of river on permissive path under Three Shires Head. In ⅓ mile ignore YA pointing left; continue uphill on main track to road at Cut-thorn (002681). Forward past house; left over stile (‘Access Land’). Follow wall, then path over moor. In ¼ mile, just short of gate in wall ahead, fork left to cross stile (998683). Follow left-hand of two YAs by fence, following track as it curves left across Robin’s Clough stream and runs south over moor. In ¾ mile follow track past house and down to road at Hole-edge (001671). Right past Bennettshitch house. In 100m, left off road (fingerpost), steeply down to road by Methodist chapel (001664).

Left across River Dane; round left bend; immediately left (fingerpost) past Dane View House. Through gate (fingerpost) and follow path with wall on left for ¾ mile through 6 walls. Just before corner of 7th wall, by a ‘Peak & Northern Footpath Society’ notice on pole (009671), turn right downhill. In 200m, left at another PNFS notice (‘Flash’); aim across fields to pass Wicken Walls farm (014672). Ahead with wall on left; down across stile; steeply down rocks to river (016672). Cross footbridge (‘Flash’); steeply up bank, over stile; bear right up path which curves to left with wall on right (YAs). Follow path to drive of Axe Edge Green farm (020672). Right for 100m; left up to road (021671); left to Flash.

NB – Detailed directions (recommended!), online map, more walks: www.christophersomerville.co.uk. Click on Facebook “Like” link to share this walk with Facebook friends.

Lunch: New Inn, Flash (01298-22941) – open daily evenings, Fri-Sun lunchtimes and evenings (no food, BYO sandwiches); or picnic by Pannier’s Pool.
More info: Leek TIC (01528-483741; www.visitpeakdistrict.co.uk)
http://tourism.swale.gov.uk/isleofsheppey.htm
www.ramblers.org.uk www.satmap.com www.LogMyTrip.co.uk

 Posted by at 02:21
Mar 012009
 

Introduction

I have been inspired by writers, painters, musicians, poets; by naturalists, birdwatchers and wildflower experts; by conservationists and their vitally important work. And I have been galvanised by the wildly changing weather of these islands, the beautiful and absorbing manifestations of our four distinct seasons, the splendour and variety of our landscapes, and the company of countless workers, idlers and walkers I have met along the way and what they’ve had to say about a thousand things.

Christopher Somerville’s 100 Best Walks is designed to grab you by the ear and tug you outdoors. Meanwhile, here is a personal Six of the Best …

 

Aldbury and Ashridge, Chiltern Hills, Herts/Bucks (July 1998)

Up in the beechwoods on the Ashridge slopes above Aldbury, a softly fluting thrush was chief herald of a dawn that had hardly broken yet. I had yawned my way out of bed at two o'clock this morning to enjoy the moment so often read about, so seldom experienced, when the first birds crack the silence of night before traffic roar intrudes to spoil things. To have the whole of the Chiltern ridge entirely to myself, to be able to walk the chalk tracks through the trees without seeing another soul, was a pleasure so intoxicating that I found myself striding along through the half light more like a race walker than a man with time to dawdle and linger.

I turned off the path and sat down on a fallen tree to luxuriate in this unaccustomed sense of time in hand. Light was beginning to touch the beech trunks and leaves, and there was a pearly pink look to the sky in the east. Drifts of mist curled between the trees, and the air in the woods was cold enough to nip my fingers white.

In the treetops the dawn chorus was in full swing. Blackbirds, thrushes, chaffinches; a chiff-chaff repeating its name over and over again; a blackcap bubble-and-squeaking; wrens reeling out chattering streams of notes. From overhead came the chak-chak of rooks passing, and under everything lay a soft foundation of wood pigeons’ throaty cooing. A glorious row, that had me spellbound for half an hour as the daylight slowly broadened.

Barnsley and Bibury, Gloucestershire (January 2001)

The old ridge track, probably a prehistoric route in its origins, lay puddled and rutted. I followed it for a mile or so, head down, buffeted sideways by gusts that leaped with a shriek out of a dramatically darkening sky. Time to get off the ridge, down to more sheltered ground. I made it into St Mary's Church at Bibury just as the storm broke in earnest.

St Mary's is a good place to sit out a rainstorm. There is Saxon, Norman and Early English work to admire, and a fine display of beautifully carved stone foliage. I idled dreamily in a pew until the rain ceased crashing on the windows.

Bibury gleamed as I walked its higgledy-piggledy courts and streets. The Cotswold stone houses shone in a glaze of sunlit rainwater. The River Coln sluiced viciously under the arches of the little stone footbridge that led to the crooked 17th-century weavers' cottages of Arlington Row. The green acres of Rack Isle, where the weavers once hung their wool to dry, lay drowned under four feet of water. 'No-one in the village has ever seen it like this,' said the man laying sandbags on his doorstep. 'Just have to hope for a change in the weather, won't we?'

As I climbed the trickling track of Hay Lane, the western sky was all a purple bruise. One chink of lemon yellow sun broke through, running an electric wire of gold along the upper rim of the cloud bank – a sight I would have braved a dozen rainstorms to witness.

Worm’s Head, Gower, South Wales (June 2000)

Taking the two-mile scramble to the tip of dragon-shaped Worm’s Head is not as easy as it looks. You have to read your tides right. Currents are fierce here in the widening throat of the Bristol Channel, and many a careless venturer down the centuries has been swept away to death as the rising tides come swirling together.

The rocks of the causeway lay coated with millions of mussel shells that were themselves encrusted with a camel-brown layer of barnacles. In the rock pools blennies flicked from sunlight into the shelter of weed and anemone fringes, and hermit crabs went tip-toeing hastily from one dark crevice to the next as my shadow barred the water round them.

As the falling tide seethed back from the northern and southern edges of the causeway, the pattern of the rocks of Worm’s Head became clear. Hundreds of close-packed parallel lines of strata lay upended in the floor of the sea, ground down flat on the margins of the shore, rising to show through the meagre turf of the Inner Head’s nape like cranium skin peeking between the lines of a comb dragged through thinning hair.

I crunched on over carpets of broken mussel shells, passing a big rusted ship’s anchor lying tines up, and clambered up from the causeway on to the slope of the Inner Head. A strange name, since this 150ft lozenge of grass-grown rock is so obviously the body of the twin-humped promontory that Norse sea-rovers named Wurm or ‘dragon’. I checked my watch as I came ashore. Better be back here in a couple of hour’s time …

Hathersage and Stanage Edge, Peak District, Derbyshire (February 2008)

Stanage Edge, the rocky rim of what was once a gigantic dome of millstone grit, is climbers’ and boulderers’ heaven. The grey adhesive rock, fractured into steps, cracks and layers, offers challenges to test the virgin tyro as well as the complete and utter expert. Famous names from that introverted, macho and phenomenally athletic world, the hardest of the ‘hard man’ school – Don Whillans, Nat Allen, Joe Brown and their ilk – cut their climbing teeth along these modest-looking crags. They and their successors dubbed every climbable crack and interstice with names superbly curt and clipped: Goliath’s Groove, Agony Crack, The Unconquerables, The Vice, Blockhead Direct, Queersville, The Eliminator.

I strode the flat, tricky gritstone pavement along the Edge, face to the cold wind, in a kind of high-level ecstasy. Climbers crouched and sprawled in impossibly heroic poses on every crag, and beyond them a most enormous view opened to the south and west across the frosted fields and shadowy moors and edges of the Dark Peak. To the left ran cream and purple moors, the wind streaming their pale grasses so that the whole wide upland appeared to be in motion, racing north into Yorkshire.

Higger Tor and Carl Wark lay ahead, flat-topped tors like castles. I stormed their walls in an outpouring of supercharged energy. Then, breathless and buffeted, I dropped down through tumbled meadows around Mitchell Field Farm and the mock-baronial miniature fortress of Scraperlow House; down towards Hathersage, the warmth and light of the Scotsman’s Pack inn, and the grey church spire that marks where Little John lies sleeping until Robin’s horn wakes him for one last chase through the glades of the eternal Forest.

Poetry Path, Kirkby Stephen, Cumbria (September 2005)

It was a filthy, gale-torn day, with the rain-swollen River Eden crashing majestically through the woods and milky curtains of wind-rippled rain parting and closing on the Cumbrian fells. But Meg Peacocke was happy to brave the elements with me. It was Meg who created the twelve poems that were carved by sculptor Pip Hall into stones along the Poetry Path.

‘I found it very interesting and challenging,’ Meg told me as we walked the muddy river bank on a carpet of leaves whipped from the trees by the gale. ‘I wanted the poems to communicate themselves to anyone, non-poets really, and in particular these local farmers and farming people whom they celebrate.’

The poems are subtly located – January in an angle of bank by the Swingy Bridge, February on a pile of blocks opposite a lovely old stone barn, March in a pool below a natural spillway of tiny waterfalls. The carved cameos include April lambs butting milk from their mother’s udder, July haymakers hefting a bale, brawny farmers inspecting sheep at an October sale.

In Kirkby Stephen this afternoon the local farmers would still be hanging over the pen gates at the mart, or driving the Swaledales they’d chosen in the auction ring back up to the fellside farms. Down here in the valley I ran my hand over Pip Hall’s sculpture of sheep in a pen, and savoured Meg Peacocke’s words:

‘Penned in a huddle, the great tups

are clints of panting stone. The shepherd lifts

a sideways glance from the labour

of dagging tails. His hands are seamed with muck

and the sweat runs into his eyes.

Above us, a silent plane has needled

the clear blue. Paling behind it

a crimped double strand of wool unravels.’

Glen Esk, Angus, Scotland (May 2005)

The world of science lost a great botanist when music sank its fatal talons into Dave Richardson. I would have seen nothing on the ascent from Glen Esk if it hadn’t been for my sharp-eyed friend. ‘Broad buckler fern under the rock here,’ mused Dave, his restless curiosity all fired up, ‘and, let me see … yes, green spleenwort. Yellow mountain saxifrage, not really open yet of course – and purple saxifrage … hmm, cloudberry, Rubus chamaemorus, yes …’ The bare rocks seemed to flower as he pointed out their spring glories.

Up in the broad glen of upper Glen Unich we picnicked, dangling our legs from the footbridge upstream of the Falls of Damff. Tracks, rocks and open patches of moorland glittered with mica in the weak sunshine of early spring. Away to the north the three thousand foot crest of Mount Keen rose above all its sister peaks. Scuds of cloud swept up and across the steady blue field of the sky. This was spring in Angus as I had imagined it while coming north through grey weather from a stale southern city – cold, clean and entirely captivating.

We licked the last of the Arbroath smokie pâté from our fingers, swigged the remnants of the tea, and made off along the Water of Unich among stubbly peat hags and the black channels of hill burns. Mountain hares in snow-white coats went bouncing away over the dark heather as we descended to Inchgrundle farmhouse. A scimitar-winged shape skimmed close over the waters of Loch Lee – the first swallow of spring. I made up my mind that tonight I would get out the melodeon and persuade Dave to help me nail for good and all that tricky turn in ‘Out On The Ocean’.

 Posted by at 00:00