Following her sterling work amongst wounded soldiers in the Crimea, Florence Nightingale returned to England.  After spending a few days in London, she boarded the London to Manchester train at St Pancras Station.  Leaving it unannounced at the tiny halt serving Whatstandwell, she set off to walk quietly along the hillside road, climbing steadily to Holloway and Lea Hurst, summer home of the wealthy Nightingale family.  The only people she met along the climb would have been local quarrymen and one or two farmers, whose polite greeting she acknowledged with a friendly smile.  This winter warmer walk follows her hillside route as far as Holloway, before dropping back into the valley and returning along the canal, which would have been far busier in her day, but with more wildlife than today’s. Florence was a member of the Nightingale family, owners of a successful mill and hat factory at Lea Mills, as well as having profitably run lead mining and smelting interests.  Her immediate family inherited Lea Hurst, but her mother was unhappy living there so far from London society.  Living on a cold hillside was not for her, and in any case, the house was too small, having only 15 bedrooms!  As a compromise, Florence’s father bought a more suitable property at Embley Park in Hampshire, but still using Lea Hurst purely as a summer residence.  Florence was named after the Italian city where her parents were living at the time, likewise her elder sister Parthenope was named after the Greek settlement in Naples.  It was during her visits to Lea Hurst that Florence’s commitments to nursing began to take shape.  At first she spent her time ministering to the local sick and poor, along with people living in and around Holloway.  This hardly met with the standards of her...