The Peak district boundary walk.
01/04/2018
This weekends walk started from the sleepy little village of Wormhill, sitting amid beautiful white peak scenery above Millers dale. Its a laidback sort of place, so quiet nothing much ever happens. A dog may bark,a tractor drives past, occasionally a Chicken will cross the road, that's about it. Parking up on the lane to the church [ which I shall visit on our return ] we set off passing the James Brindley memorial. He was the villages famous son the pioneer/engineer of Britains canal system. So that's a feather in Wormhills cap. Another interesting fact is that the village was once known as Wolfhill. A place where centuries ago Wolf hunts took place. It is said to be the place where the last Wolf in England was shot and killed. No wolves around today, if there were I'm guessing those Chickens would have crossed that road a bit quicker.
Away from the village and over a few tricky wall stiles we followed the route of the Peak district boundary walk. Good views began to open up, lovely White peak views. The Peak district is made up of two totally different areas, the White peak and the Dark peak "but which is best" I cant decide. The beautiful Limestone dales or the brooding Gritstone moors, I love them both. A few more tricky stiles and we were stood above Peter dale, quite gloomy today but an impressive sight nonetheless.
Dropping down into the dale, our path meets up with the Limestone way,a delightful route from Castleton to Rocester. As we walked we spoke of our Limestone way adventures, a walk we have still to finish. We have probably completed about 95% of it but gave up after a scary encounter with a herd of cows. I am not usually phased by cattle but I still shudder to this day when thoughts flood back to the stampede we were caught up in...Maybe we will go back and finish the walk one day. Next came Hay dale a nature reserve that will soon be alive with wildflowers after which came Dam dale. I enjoyed the path along its length until we heard a right old commotion Cattle lowing oh no! my blood turned cold... A couple of Buzzards circled overhead. We rounded a corner and there ahead of us was a farm. The noise got louder as we approached.And then we spotted them in a barn [thankfully]. Loads of them standing in long lines having their breakfast, doing a sort of Mexican wave with their heads as they chomped on hay.
More green fields and we had arrived at Peak forest, a small village on a busy road. This was as far as we would walk along the trail today. We will start the next section from here next week. We found a sheltered bench for a leisurely lunch to watch the world go by before heading back to Wormhill. The map informed us that we could return via a quiet country lane, this we did, seeing only a handful of cars along its entire length....Back in Wormhill all was still quiet.
St Margarets church.
Hello Steven. It's good to read a fellow Doncastrian also posting his walks in the Peak District. Thanks for the information about Wormhill, I didn't know about the canals and the last wolf...but I did take a photograph of the farm in the village that produces milk for Stilton cheese.
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to the rest of your updates; by the way, I'm a White Peak man myself.