After COVID scuppered our overseas plans, we instead travelled around the UK for five weeks, keeping as socially distanced as possible and visiting many lesser-known areas. A wonderful opportunity to rediscover our own country.
In case you missed it on Instagram, I'll be posting our summer 2020 travels on here across the next four days. Here is the first instalment.
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The girls should have been on a week’s camp with Girlguiding, so Dave and I were treating ourselves to a stay in a small cottage in the centre of the Peak District the same week (our first cottage stay in 10 years!), with plenty of hiking on the agenda.
The Girlguiding camp was our first holiday casualty from COVID, so the girls ended up joining us in the Peak District for the week. The cottage was big enough (we find anything larger than a 2 x 3 metre tent amply spacious) ... but would they be up for all the walking we’d planned?
We broke them in gently with a mile or two along Birchen Edge as we first entered the Peak District from the east. With rocky outcrops to clamber on, fairy mushrooms (fly agaric) to spot and sweeping views to – well – view, they seemed happy enough. Just so long as we didn’t mention the W word (walking ... shhhh).
Dave, meanwhile, communed with Nelson. At least, he appeared to be deep in conversation with Nelson’s Monument on Birchen Edge. This 3 metre gritstone column topped with a head-like gritstone ball perches atop the precipice, and the Nelson theme is continued with the adjacent Ship Rocks being inscribed with the names of three of Nelson’s ships, Victory, Defiance and Royal Soverin [sic].
[Use arrows or swipe to scroll photos] Millers Dale near Buxton, Peak District National Park.
Our cottage was nestled in the heart of the Peak District, with pretty dales (valleys) in every direction.
The sparkling, clear River Wye through Millers Dale was a hit with all of us. The restored water wheel with its mossy-roofed machinery housing was a poignant reminder of past times when a corn mill (grist mill) stood on this spot, one of two adjacent mills run by the Dakin brothers during the Victorian period.
Blissfully tranquil now, this area was highly industrialised in one way or another for over 200 years until half a century ago. Historically, there were mills for corn, timber, cotton, silk ... and even distilled peppermint!
Adjoining Millers Dale, Monks Dale veers away from the road and up a small valley that can only be explored on foot.
We passed hardly anyone on our walk of several miles through an idyllic, quiet landscape of lushly green, steep dales and rolling hills set with dry stone walls and massed with pale purple flowers. Mainly, we were accompanied by no more than a few hardy sheep and some highland cattle bearing ‘teddy bear’ ears instead of fearsome horns.
[Use arrows or swipe to scroll photos] Monks Dale, Peak District National Park.
A day or two later, by meeting up with the grandparents, the girls were encouraged on another walk, this time a few miles along Millers Dale and Monsal Dale. We wanted to take in the area’s magical natural beauty sprinkled with Victorian industrial heritage.
[Use arrows or swipe to scroll photos] Monsal Dale, Monsal Viaduct and hills, Peak District National Park.
Two large cotton mills were built in these dales in the late 18th century: Cressbrook Mill and the infamous Litton Mill, the latter worked by pauper children in terrible conditions.
In 1863, eighty years after the mills were built, Millers Dale and Monsal Dale were further industrialised by the encroachment of the railway into the area using a series of huge, stone and steel viaducts. The move was controversial and, at the time, Ruskin famously wrote that this beautiful valley was now to be “desecrated in order that a Buxton fool may be able to find himself in Bakewell at the end of twelve minutes, and vice-versa”.
Indeed, for over 100 years, little Millers Dale, at the junction of the Buxton-Bakewell line and the main London-Manchester line, was one of the largest and busiest stations in the area. Farmers from all over the Peaks converged on the ‘milk train’ every morning to supply around 2000 gallons of milk daily to the bottling plants in Sheffield and Manchester. Coming the other way, hundreds of workers from these industrial heartlands streamed in every day during the summer months in search of clean country air. As a consequence, housing, inns and hotels sprang up in Millers Dale, and a new church (St Anne’s) was built in 1879 to function as both a place of worship and a school.
All this changed in 1968 when many railway lines in Britain were closed as part of the ‘Beeching Cuts’. Thankfully, in 1980, the Peak National Park Authority took over the line that had been closed between Buxton and Bakewell and converted it into the very popular Monsal Trail. This pretty walking, cycling and horseriding path is replete with numerous tunnels and viaducts, and the Monsal Viaduct so deprecated by Ruskin now adds a stunning focal point to the valley view from Monsal Head.
Another consequence of bringing the railway into Millers Dale and Monsal Dale in 1863 was improved access to the area’s rich limestone deposits. This led to intensive quarrying and the building of lime kilns along the railway banks. The old kilns, overgrown and derelict, now serve as nature reserves hosting an abundance of wildlife including native orchids.
After such a lovely walk with the grandparents along Monsal Dale, next day, we decided to do another walk. Grandma had already been nursing a poorly knee, but had managed so well the day before that we knew we needed something much more severe for her ... the Dragon’s Back (aka Chrome Hill) near Earl Sterndale!
[Use arrows or swipe to scroll photos] Dragon’s Back, Peak District National Park.
There was general dissent as to which of the peaks was THE dragon. But climbing up and along and (hardest of all on the knees!) down one of the spiny ridges took its toll on everyone. However, the magnificent, 360 degree view from the top was well worth it.
We also enjoyed a completely deserted lower loop back to the start, and an end-of-walk rest by the attractive village pond of Earl Sterndale, where we toasted our achievements with lukewarm cups of flask coffee.
[Use arrows or swipe to scroll photos] River Dove and Wolfscote Dale near Hartingdon, Peak District National Park.
On our last day in the Peak District, we arranged to meet up with a long-standing friend and his daughter who live in the area for ... you guessed it, a walk.
The River Dove and Dove Dale is a very attractive and popular location in the Peak District, especially where stepping stones cross the river near Ilam. But big queues form at the stepping stones (despite there being a bridge just 400 m downstream) and we were avoiding crowds. So we chose to walk along the River Dove further upstream and to meet in the late afternoon.
We first headed to the pretty village of Hartington, merely 6 miles north of Ilam. This thriving tourist spot still shows vestiges of its past as an important, wealthy village and is famous for producing Stilton blue cheese.
Within minutes of leaving the village centre, we enjoyed Wolfscote Dale and its offshoot, Biggin Dale, almost completely to ourselves. The children paddled in the River Dove and we ate a picnic tea in the late afternoon sunshine on an empty hillside, before returning to Hartingdon and heading our separate ways.
[Use arrows or swipe to scroll photos] The Chevin, Otley, England.
We now transited north to Otley, near Leeds, where we enjoyed a walk with friends up The Chevin, along an attractive cobbled street, and with magnificent panoramic views and rock clambering at the top.
They say that people in the north of the UK are friendly. It was our friend’s birthday, and a near-neighbour came along to give a birthday serenade from the end of the garden, singing along to his guitar – something he’d done from his own garden periodically during lockdown. It was truly magical, sitting out in the flower-bedecked garden with our friends, humming along to our own personal, socially-distanced rendition of ‘Matchstalk Men and Matchstalk Cats and Dogs’ and other great favourites.
Otley is situated on the River Wharfe. In two cars, we headed with our friends about 20 miles north-west upriver to a quiet, quaint paddling spot near Grassington in the Yorkshire Dales.
The children created a temporary causeway and pool in the cool, clear river and had a brief toe dip (the letter ‘p’ apparently stood for both pool and paddle). They then raced off to rescue someone else’s rubber ring that was being swept away through deep, surging rapids further downstream.
That was, until we adults demanded that the rescue be called off when the incautious enthusiasm of two of the children looked likely to result in their being swept away as well. (DISCLAIMER: no rubber rings were harmed during this incident. Indeed, the rubber ring in question soon beached itself just below the rapids and was retrieved by its adult owner.)
The day ended with a walk (of course), during which we saw a deer come down to the opposite bank of the river, and had a brief foray into Grassington village for sweets, with everyone suitably attired in a motley array of face coverings.
[Use arrows or swipe to scroll photos] River Wharfe and Grassington, Yorkshire Dales National Park, England.
[TO BE CONTINUED]