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    Walks In Derbyshire

    There really is no better way to see the beautiful area that we live in than to walk in Derbyshire. Over the years we have walked what feels like pretty much the entire of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire and feel it only right to share those walks with you. In every edition of Country Images Magazine we feature a walk for you to follow and now we’ve put them online for you to read too. If you have a mobile or tablet, why not follow the walks on it, with a map and an explanation of where to go it’s ideal for you to follow so as not to get lost. We hope  you enjoy the selection below and check back regularly for new walks.

     
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    Derbyshire Walk – Elvaston Castle

    Derbyshire Walk – Elvaston Castle

    June 27, 2018

    This walk, around the parkland of Elvaston Castle, is one of my occasional excursions from some of Derbyshire’s grand houses.  Unfortunately it could almost be described as from one of Maxwell Craven’s ‘Lost Houses’.  Financial constraints on its present owners, Derbyshire County Council, make it impossible to fund the necessary £6.1 million needed to restore the building’s fabric; something that has put it very firmly on the list of ‘Buildings at Risk’ register.  As a result of the house being unsafe, it means that it has been closed to the public since 2008, but the 200 acres of parkland around which this walk goes, are still freely accessible. There is also a programme of events in the park throughout the year, ranging from an Easter egg trail, to a night time guided nature walk – for further details check www.derbyshire.gov.uk/countryside events. Until Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries, the estate was owned by Shelford Priory, after which it was sold in 1538, to Sir Michael Stanhope of Rampton, Notts.  Following his death in 1611, the whole estate, including Elvaston, was inherited by his second son, also called Michael.  He became High Sheriff of Derbyshire and died in 1638, but not before he built the Elizabethan-styled house at Elvaston on the outskirts of Derby in 1633. With little change, Elvaston passed steadily through generations of Stanhopes until the 19th century.  This was when Charles Stanhope, 3rd Earl of Harrington employed the architect James Wyatt to extend and re-develop the castle in the then popular Gothic Revival style. During this time a new wing and the great hall were added.  Further modifications on the Elizabethan-styled south front were carried out in 1836 by the architect Lewis Nockalls Cottingham, leaving the building very much as we see it today. Vacated by its original...

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    Walk Derbyshire – Foolow & Silly Dale

    Walk Derbyshire – Foolow & Silly Dale

    June 5, 2018

    There are no records of any simpleton, either in Foolow or Silly Dale; both names come from Anglo Saxon English and have entirely different meanings than in today’s language.  Foolow means multi-coloured hill, possibly a reference to nearby Eyam Edge. Silly is Old English for pretty, an apt description of this little-known dale, especially in late spring when the limestone-loving flowers are in full bloom. The walk starts and finishes in Foolow, a village of light grey limestone cottages, arguably the most picturesque in the Peak District National Park.  There is a bay-windowed manor house and the Bull’s Head offers an excellent menu to satisfy the hunger of the hardiest walker.  Until 1888 when the tiny limestone church dedicated to St Hugh was opened, church-goers congregated around the ancient stone cross and its pagan bull-ring standing next to the duck pond. Until 1932 when pipes were laid, water was a problem in this upland village.  Before then villagers had to collect water from a well a little way along the Hucklow Edge road above the village.  Cattle enjoyed the convenience of the attractive duck pond on the village green and in celebration of the gift of water, village wells have been dressed since 1983 on the Saturday prior to the last Sunday in August. Starting from Foolow the walk climbs up to Hucklow Edge before turning west and descending to the neighbouring village of Great Hucklow.  This village, clustered around its pub, the Queen Anne, is really a group of five inter-linked hamlets where lead miners delving 600 feet beneath the ground, worked the riches of High Rake, following a series of inter-connected veins running north-westwards.  Pack Horse teams once carried the ore together with Cheshire salt across the high limestone moorland, by trackways that can still be traced for...

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    Walk Derbyshire – Tideswell, Miller’s Dale and Litton

    Walk Derbyshire – Tideswell, Miller’s Dale and Litton

    May 1, 2018

    The history of the Peak District is writ large on this walk.  Starting way back in time when volcanoes spewed out their lavas, the walk enters one of the loveliest dales in the White Peak, but it was where orphaned children were unable to enjoy its delights.  Climbing out of the dale, the way is across fields whose layout would still be recognised by the medieval farmers who ploughed their furrows with pairs of oxen.  Two villages come next, Litton and Tideswell, the latter with its church classed as the ‘Cathedral of the Peak’.  From there the way back to the car park follows back roads and footpaths laid out well over a hundred years ago. The volcanic activity mentioned above took place in what is now known as Tideswell Dale.  The hillside to your left, on walking down the dale, has some quarried areas of dark coloured rock between layers of limestone. These are the remains of lava flows that spewed out of volcanic vents surrounding a tropical lagoon that once covered what became the White Peak of Derbyshire.  At the dale end the path joins the main, or Miller’s Dale down which flows the clear waters of the Derbyshire River Wye.  A mile or two downstream the river enters its prettiest section, aptly called ‘Water-cum-Jolly Dale’, but before it reaches this sylvan glade, the river once powered a cotton mill whose young operatives lived a life of hell.  This is Litton Mill to which orphaned children were brought from workhouses as far away as London to enter a life of cruel servitude as so-called apprentices.  Nowadays the mill having ceased production, has been converted into apartments and its subordinate cottages are now lived in by locals whose ancestors may well have been those orphans apprenticed to slavery. There...

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    Derbyshire Walk – Tissington

    Derbyshire Walk – Tissington

    April 5, 2018

    I had visions of Michael Fish, the man whose forecast about there being no danger of hurricanes, went as his Scots forebears would have put it; ‘gone aft a’gley’.  In my case it was a completely wrong interpretation of the forecast. According to a weather map in the Guardian a day or so before the planned walk, the weekend weather should have been dull at first, then sunny.  Perfect I thought but after the first hour’s walking, instead of sunshine, we had snow, not much, but enough to make us wonder if we had done the right thing, but by then we were well into the walk, and had to plod on regardless. This walk rather than be between two grand houses, aims for just one, Tissington Hall as its high point.  Starting from the little known village of Parwich, the way is across the valley of Bletch Brook, then by way of a short length of the Tissington Trail to the estate village of Tissington.  The return follows a more northerly route, across fields and then over Bletch Brook once more.  It then travels back to Parwich where Robinsons’ a renowned Stockport brewery supplies the Sycamore – their ‘Old Tom’ was a warming respite at the end of a bitterly cold and damp walk. The two villages visited on this walk are built on ancient foundations.  Parwich can almost be classed as a hidden outpost.  Its secluded stone-built cottages sit around a pleasant village green filling a sunny hollow and can claim to be one of the least known Peakland villages.  The church is built on Saxon and Norman foundations, but like many of its kind was ‘improved’ during the Victorian zeal for modernisation.  Its hall though dating from 1747 is not built from the plentiful local stone, but...

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    Walk Derbyshire – A Walk over 2 Dales

    Walk Derbyshire – A Walk over 2 Dales

    February 27, 2018

    The dales this walk covers are within a mile or two of each other and even though they join later, both are entirely different in character.  Their names are the Manifold and the Dove. Their character is mostly determined by the rocks over which their rivers flow; gritstone shales for the Manifold and carboniferous limestone for the Dove’s bedrock. Limestone being the main underlying rock of this part of the White Peak, manages to take over lower down the manifold where the river disappears temporarily through cavernous systems carved millennia ago. Starting in Longnor, an attractive one-time market town, the walk follows the broad, middle section of the Manifold before crossing over an airy grassy ridge in order to drop down into the valley of the River Dove.  In this dale the scenery is entirely different; to the north beyond Crowdecote, dramatic limestone hills point skywards, looking for all the world like a row of shark’s teeth.  In ancient geological times they marked the sea-washed edge of a tropical lagoon and, as a result are technically known as reef knolls. Longnor stands at the boundary of the Dark and White Peak and is also where several pack horse and drove roads meet.  Until the beginning of the twentieth century it was an important meeting place for local farmers who came to this upland village in order to sell their produce and animals.  The original owners of the village and lands round about, the Harpur Crewe family from Calke Abbey, built the market hall and cobbled its frontage.  With the coming of efficient road transport, markets are no longer held there and cars park where cattle pens once stood, but it is easy to imagine the bustle and noise of a busy market.  A list of tolls levied against animals sold...

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    Walk Derbyshire – Viator’s Bridge & The Dove Holes

    Walk Derbyshire – Viator’s Bridge & The Dove Holes

    February 1, 2018

    This short walk can be fitted in with a trip exploring more of Dovedale or simply as a day out combined with lunch at one of the hospitable pubs in villages round and about the valley. It is over 300 years since Izaak Walton fished in the pure waters of the river Dove along with his impecunious friend Charles Cotton of Beresford Hall, near Hartington. Apart from light traffic along the short stretch of modern road through Milldale, the two friends would easily recognise this part of the dale. Dovedale and its famous trout stream have changed little since Walton and Cotton spent time along its banks, angling and philosophising.  Walton referred to the Dove as being ‘The finest river that I ever saw and the fullest of fish’; a sentiment true even today.  Many of the houses in this tiny hamlet are founded on dwellings that would have been standing in Walton and Cotton’s time.  The village takes its name from two mills that once provided employment for people living there; remnants of both mills remain, still capable of taking power from the river.  Lode Mill is higher up the valley; converted into a barn, it once ground and separated lead ore from the parent limestone.  The mill closest to the village is Ochre Mill; powered by water from the leat which begins a few yards upstream of Viator’s Bridge, is also recognisable as a barn, but in its day it produced powder for making red lead paint. In his angling treatise The Compleat Angler, Izaak Walton refers to himself as ‘Viator’ (traveller), and addresses Cotton as ‘Piscator’. (angler).  In the book Walton expresses amazement at the narrowness of the bridge which bears his nom-de-plume, ‘Viator’. The route followed by this walk follows the river downstream from Viator’s Bridge...

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    We hope you enjoy the walks, but check back regularly for more walks in Derbyshire and walks in The Peak District as we are constantly adding new ones.

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    Country Images Magazine is Derbyshire’s leading independent lifestyle magazine, proudly rooted in the heart of the county and dedicated to celebrating its rich heritage, natural beauty, and vibrant communities. Each issue features a carefully curated selection of articles exploring Derbyshire’s history and landscapes, alongside the latest home and interior design trends, local theatre productions, cultural events, dining destinations, and lifestyle inspiration.

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