Eldon Hole 10/10/10

Another lovely Autumn day today so we set off to the Village of Peak Forest for a walk that took us past Eldon Hole. We parked on the road from Peak Forest to Old Dam, a small hamlet, and set off walking out of the hamlet and up towards the track that led onto Eldon Hill After an uphill walk that passed a couple of farms the track became a path and as we got onto the lower slope of the hill, we could see a scar on the hillside and headed for it, this is Eldon Hole (pictured) a deep pothole, with plenty of legends about it, which I wont go into here but they make interesting reading. Suffice to say it was thought to be a bottomless entrance to hell although when finally descended was found to be about 230 feet deep.
After visiting the top of the pot we should have retraced our steps back to the path but I though we could take a short cut across the side of the hill, however I was rather out with this idea and we ended climbing almost to the top of the hill before my mistake was pointed out to me We continued on however  and walked along the top of the hill toward the path we should have been on. Although it was a lovely sunny day the wind on the top we very strong, but we managed to find some hillocks to shelter behind and have a short break.
We now walked down to the track we should have been on which had skirted the hill rather than crossed it as we had done and walked up toward a lane at the top of of the track. We then continued down this lane past fields showing evidence of mining, of which there must have been a lot in the past, and eventually reached the Limestone way, having walked for a little while,on the same track we had walked on our first walk from Castleton. We turned away from the path to Castleton and followed the Limestone way for a few hundred yards until we climded a stile and started a short climb near Oxlow hill, lots more evidence of lead mining around here gives quite an unusual landscape, with lots of hillocks and small valleys. It was at this point we met the first people we had seen all walk, we had really had the hills to ourselves, strange on such a lovely day but we were obviously not doing a poular walk.
We soon found ourselves walking down a track where our road was partially blocked by 2 cows and 3 calves that had some how got out of the neighbouring field. This little band escorted us down to track until we reached a gate that we were able to get through but they werent. We now entered a little wood which looked lovely with the sun shining through the gaps in the branches above us, dappled certainly applied to this part of the walk.
 Emerging from the wood we arrived at a farmhouse and after crossing a couple of fields arrived at the road which led back to Old Dam and shortly after to the car.
There isnt much at Peak Forest but as Castleton was quite close we decided to drive there as we were missing the scones that we had been finishing our walks with. In contrast to where we had been Castleton was very busy but we manged to find the scone cafe before it closed for a well desersed snack before setting of home.

The walk was not much more than 4 miles and took us about 3 hours, we made it harder than it should have been with my ill judged short cut but it was very enjoyable and some wonderfull views were to be had when on the top of Eldon, very little in the way of flora or fauna but lots of calves and some oddly striped bulls which on googling appear to be Belted Galloway.