Chatsworth

The rain that began mid-afternoon yesterday continues to patter on the flat roof above our study. Why didn't I light the garden bonfire before this drenching, before greyness covered the city and the sodden streets  were made shiny with wetness? 

I could have struck the match on Saturday when the weather was gorgeous and the prunings and clippings and sycamore branches were almost bone dry... but instead I was out walking again having declined the opportunity to go to Leeds with Shirley for a shopping expedition with Princess Frances - our darling daughter. To me shopping expeditions are on a par with visiting the dentist and Maths lessons of yore.

When thinking of a new walk, hidden cogs whirr in my brain and soon I focus on a particular area before planning a route with the assistance of Ordnance Survey's "Get A Map". Then I'm off. Of course, I have been to the Chatsworth Estate many  times before but it is a huge area of land and it's only twenty minutes from our hovel so that's where I decided to go on Saturday.

I parked in the village of Baslow - home to England's former cricket captain Michael Vaughan - and set off southwards towards Chatsworth House. Apart from the ostentatious stately home built for the Dukes of Devonshire, the estate contains a surprising number of cottages and farms. There are streams and lakes, follies and fountains, formal and informal gardens, woods, sheep pastures and even a nine hole golf course and a cricket ground - 35,000 acres in total.

As it was a sunny Saturday, there were many cars parked up by the grand house and the huge former stable block. Parking costs £3 per vehicle and there must have been a thousand cars there Not bad work if you can get it! Of course, the majority of visitors would have been paying to go inside the stately home and its gardens or scoffing posh nosh in the stable block or wasting money in the gift shops but I was going up into the woods and out into the countryside. I climbed four hundred feet to Bess of Hardwick's sixteenth century hunting tower and then passed The Emperor Lake which feeds the famous Emperor Fountain before reaching The Swiss Lake.

Out of the woods and into the sheep country then back down to Dobb Edge and along to The Jubilee Stone and the grand gatehouses by the ornate north entrance that is closed to visitors. I followed the path back to Plantation House and the kissing gate that leads back to Baslow. Another really lovely three hour walk but now the huge bonfire pile is saturated. Shirley just phoned to say there's a power cut at her health centre and she may need me to bring her a big jumper as the heating has been off for an hour now. Such an inconvenience rarely happens these days. For your interest, snaps from Saturday's walk:-

The kissing gate - path from Baslow

Chatsworth cricket ground

Just a few of the cars parked by the big house

The hunting tower - 16th century

Swiss Cottage by The Swiss Lake 

Forgotten sheep track east of Chatsworth

Inscription on The Jubilee Rock - commemorating
Queen' Victoria's Golden Jubilee in 1887

Chatsworth northern gates and gatehouses

Edge

"...the eternal rocks beneath" - Emily Bronte in "Wuthering Heights"

Looking eastwards to Seal Edge from Fairbrook Naze

I was so energised by my recent arduous ramble to the Kinder Scout plateau that I decided to go back yesterday morning. The weather forecast was promising but it was raining when I parked up close to "The Snake Pass Inn", by the two lane A57 which weaves its way over the dark Pennine uplands to Lancashire. 

After the rain shower had passed, I donned my boots and ventured down through the Snake Woodlands and into the valley of the River Ashop - which at this point is no more than a bubbling mountain stream. Onwards, over tributary streams gurgling with peaty water, trying desperately not to slip and tumble over. To my left, "The Edge" loomed - the northern fringe of the Kinder plateau - where the underlying and unclothed millstone grit is exposed to the elements. This was my objective.

After a couple of miles, another rain shower began to spit so I donned my blue cagoule and continued through bogs, clumps of saturated moorland grasses and over rust-coloured rivulets towards the path that would lead me up to The Edge. After half an hour, the rain petered out and soon I was up there in sunshine. Miles away to my left, I could see Manchester's sprawling urban jungle languishing under leaden skies and far to the east shafts of heavenly sunlight illuminated Sheffield - my home city -  in ethereal light.

And so to The Edge - that's what it's called. Not Kinder Edge or Ashop Edge, simply The Edge like that miserable millionaire guitar player in U2. All the way along The Edge the weather behaved itself and I was treated to some wonderful sights. Or maybe it's just me. Perhaps others might dismiss what I saw as "just a bunch of stones" -  and not "the eternal rocks beneath", again sculpted by wind and rain and frost and time into magnificent shapes set in dramatically wild upland scenery. In no particular order, here's a sample of images from yesterday's walk...

Pointing the way from The Edge

Seal-like outcrop on The Edge

Rocks and sky at Fairbrook Naze

Rocks on The Edge with view to Bleaklow

Iguana-like outcrop with Ashop Head beyond

"The Boxing Glove" outcrop on The Edge

*all these photos are copyrighted