Return to the Dove valley 02/10/10

Having kept a close eye on the weather forecast the last few days, we decided to walk on Saturday this weekend. We went back to the Dove Valley and this time based the walk from Hartington. Hartington is quite a pictureque village further up the Valley from Dovedale where we went last week.
We set out leaving the villlage on a minor road, looking for the route we were planning to follow, somewhere along the road we missed our turn off but we carried on until we reached a farm where we saw a track leading off the road, we followed it and soon found a footpath sign which we then followedup a hillside.
 we walked across several fields with lots of limestone showing on the surface. we could see the line of the river in the valley but it was a lot narrower than further down the valley. We walked along the lower edge of Caldor Low, climbing steadily until the path eventually descended onto farmland.where we walked through a field of cattle with a standing stone in the middle, got to say it looked a bit out of place. The path then came to a minor road which we crossed and the path started to descend again towards Pilsbury Castle.
Pilsbury Castle (pictured) is a series of mounds and ditches behind a limestone crag, apparantly there was a wooden motte and bailey castle there sometime between the conquest and the 13th century, but because no stone was used to build it, its only because of the terrain that you would know (if you knew about castle building) that there was anything actually there. We then took a track that led down to the village of Pilsbury, I use the term village but in reality there is a farm house and a couple of ajoining houses, no cafe, toilets, shops or pub.
The route now tooks us down to the river Dove, which we crossed by a small wooden bridge and came to a track that climbed the other side of the valley. This seemed like a good place to stop and have our food. so we sat on a low wall above the river, but disaster, I had left the bag with the food in the car! Ah well we were over halfway now so nothing to do but to press on.
The route now climbed quite steeply out of the valley over terrain, which in contrast to the limestone of the Derbyside of the valley (we crossed into Staffordshire at the river) was grassy arable land. After climbing the hill we reached a road which we followed for a couple of hundred yeards before entering a farm yard and following a marked path through the farms fields, we climbed several stiles which must be the worst in the area, infact in descending one of these I cracked my shin on one of the stones, very sore but no damage done fortunately.
We then entered a plantation of conifers and made our way through this until the path descended very sharply down to fields which led back to Hartington
The walk was around five miles and took us three and a half hours, with no stop for food (bad me) not really any flora or fauna to report, just a couple of playful rabbits. Apart from losing the path, forgetting the food and cracking my shin it was a pleasant walk although not as much to see as Dovedale itself and considering the rain we had yesterday not too muddy.