The Dales of River Wye.

Today we decided to return to the River Wye and walk some more of its dales. We set off to Monsal Head to start the walk. Monsal Head stands on hills overlooking a bend in the river  and also looks down on the old railway viaduct which now carries part of the Monsal Trail.

We descended from the Head down a woody path towards Monsal Weir and here we crossed the river and started to follow it downstream through Monsal Vale It was a lovely sunny day although there was quite a breeze which kept things nice and cool for walking. The path followed the river, sometimes leaving it for a while but always returning to it again, there were lots of wild flowers in bloom, needless to say I don't really know what they were except the bluebells, I really must buy a book. We even stumbled on a tiny overgrown water wheel.

After a pleasant walk we then left the river and crossed the busy A6 at White Lodge and started a long climb up towards Taddington village. The route followed a rocky path up a valley called Dimin Dale before emerging at the top into farmland and we then followed a farm drive into the village. We approached Taddington from the opposite end from last week and no soon had we reached the village we turned away from it to walk back down to meet the A6 again.

We crossed the road again and followed a bridle way which led us to High Dale. This is a narrow V shape Dale and at around halfway through the walk we stopped to eat lunch. We walked through High  Dale until we took a path up the side of the dale and after crossing farmland we  found ourselves high above the Wye where it runs through Miller's Dale. The view from here was quite magnificent not only could we look down into the Dale where we could see steep limestone cliffs but also  towards the horizon and the hills of the northern part of the Peaks.

We descended into the dale and having crossed the Monsal Trail we paused on a bridge crossing the river, where the water was so clear we could see trout in the river, we could even see them rising to catch food.

 We then walked into the yard of the once infamous Litton Mill, which was notorious in the 19th century for abusing child labourers.

Leaving the mill behind up we continued along the banks of the Wye again, stopping to watch the birdlife on the water, some Moorhens were behaving very strangely I can only assuming it was part of the mating ritual. We saw several Dippers, one of my favourite birds, also a family of swans with very small cygnets.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We continued though the steep limestone sided valley and entered the quaintly named Water-cum-Jolly Dale as we neared Cressbrook.

 Here the river widens considerable by a large granite wall known as the Rubicon Wall where we briefly stopped to watch a rock climber negotiate a large overhang.

 

We then crossed the river over a fast running weir and started to climb the side of the dale
overlooking Cressbrook Mill. Cressbrook Mill is quite a grand building complete with a cupola on top. Like Litton Mill, Cressbrook has now been converted into apartments and would certainly be lovely place to live.

The path left the river and took us up to the Monsal Trail. The Monsal Trail follows the bed of a now closed railway and runs for about 8.5 miles from near Bakewell to Topley Pike 3 miles from Buxton, it travels through several tunnels. We followed the trail from Cressbrook tunnel over the Monsal Dale Viaduct, before leaving it just before the Headstone Tunnel, below Monsal Head.

We then ascended the valley to arrive back at our starting point.

This was on of the nicest and most diverse walks we have done, and at 7 miles also one of the longest, but as usual we took our time and were out for 5 and a half hours

First walk of the year

Well, its been quite a while since I added to this blog, what with golf and the cold spring, we haven't been out and about However, today was a great opportunity to get he boots back on and stretch the legs. Most of our walks follow routes in a book of Peak District walks. These are split into easy, medium and hard, we tend to stick to the easy and medium and today's walk was the last of the easy ones we had to do.

The walk started at Chelmorton, a village south of Buxton ans was to take in the villages of Taddington and Flagg, before returning to Chelmorton.

We parked on the road between the church and the pub and started walking up a steep path by the side of Chelmorton Low the hill that overlooks the village, this hill is not accessible but contains on its summit a couple of round prehistoric barrows, our route took us up what is known as a lead rake and is presumeable an area from which lead ore was extracted. Certainly, we walked through and area full of hump and hollows, which we have learnt to associate with the remains of lead mining.
As we reached the to of the rake we came to a bridle path and made a detour to see the Five Wells Chambered Tomb. this is a Megalithic Tomb reputed to be the highest in England. To be honest, there wasn't much to see, just a few stones, which apparently are one of the only chambers left standing, although in the past archaeologists had uncover 12 skeletons. It was rather sad that there was nothing saying what the site was, there was not even a sign identifying it.

We retraced our steps back to the route we were on, and continued to walk through farm land, to be honest it was a rather uninspiring. Although we did see plenty of  Sky Larks, Meadow Pipits and a Wheatear, there were also lots of Swallows, at least they think summer is on its way.

Soon we reached the summit of Sough Top and looked down onto the Village of Taddington, pictured at the top.. Before starting down the hill we stopped to eat our lunch and spent a while looking over the hills and valleys to the east of us, attempting to identify the various dales we could make out. I also spotted a very impressive Church in the distance but could not work out where it was, it certainly dominated the village it was in and  could well have been at Tideswell where the parish church is known as the Cathedral  of the Peak.

After our break, we descended into Taddington, rather unfairly described in our book as a bleak one street village. We did not linger and started to climb out of the village up the road to Flagg, I do not really like walking on roads and prefer fields and fortunately once we were out of the village we left the road to head across fields towards Flagg. Flagg is a tiny village with a street, a tiny church and school and a nice tea room, where, after watching a very large herd of cows being taken in for milking, we stopped to enjoy a cream tea.

We then commenced the final part of the walk back to Chelmorton, sadly the directions in the book were not very good and we could not follow them, however we did spot a bridle path that seemed to be going in the general direction, so we followed it and found ourselves back at the top of the lead rake we had walked up at the start of the walk. Although this wasn't where we were supposed to be we followed it back down to the village and the car.

All in all it was a pleasant walk and it was nice to be out in the Peak District again, but we have done lots of far more interesting walks.