Walk Two - "Winster and Birchover" - 4 miles (2 hours). On an untypically hot March afternoon, I undertook this walk with my friend Mick. We drove south to the village of Winster - west of Matlock and south of Chatsworth. My oh my - what a delightful village Winster is with a mixture of limestone and gritstone cottages - some of which date back to the sixteenth century. In its heyday, it must have been an important regional centre - when people's lives were lived in small circles and to get anywhere you travelled by horse and cart. There was also a lot of lead mining thereabouts.
Soon after parking, we were mooching around and I snapped a couple of pictures. A lady of mature years rushed out of the nearby village shop. I thought she was going to complain about me taking pictures but she wanted to know if we'd like to go in the village museum above the ancient Market House. This we did and after reading about Winster's history, we spotted several small tortoiseshell butterflies in an upper window.
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| Small tortoiseshell in The Market House, Winster |
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| Winster Village Shop |
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| A sunny gennel in Winster |
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| "The Miners Standard" pub, Winster |
We walked up The Limestone Way then cut across to the village of Birchover where we guzzled pints of bitter shandy in "The Red Lion" before heading back to lovely Winster. A downside of this country ramble was that the battery on my new camera packed up so I didn't snap many pictures. I won't make the same mistake again. The charged spare will always be in my camera case from now on. Silly me!
Aren't those ginnels terrific in Winster? We spent two weeks tucked up in a dear little cottage there while we explored the peak District.
ReplyDeleteCheers
Reading these post about the walks from you book, you really don't need to go elsewhere for holidays, you are surrounded by idyllic places to visit. That's assuming good weather of course. ;)
ReplyDelete"You say 'gennel', I say 'ginnel', let's call the whole thing off."
ReplyDeleteThanks for the timely reminder to order a spare camera battery before our trip away!
you know what, I was about to mention that I ALWAYS carry a spare battery - one for my phone.... one for my GPS device.... and one for my camera - recently, having left my camera battery on charge and dashing out of the house, the spare battery came in VERY useful - it didn't however save me when I left the memory card plugged into my laptop!! Groans!! Which book are you getting these walks from?
ReplyDeleteFoX
HELEN I am so pleased that you had already "discovered" Winster.
ReplyDeleteJENNY Yes Jenny - the good weather. Even Winster wouldn't be gorgeous if you met it first in grey murk.
SHOOTING PARROTS There are many regional names for these back alleys. By the way when are you "California Bound"?
ARCTIC SHEEP It's the Land Ranger Pathfinder series - The White Peak. They also have a great one for The Dark Peak. A pit pricey at £11.99 but worth every penny.
I know most folks like those rechargeable lithium batteries. My cameras both use AA batteries, though, and I prefer them. Even in Podunk, Missouri there will be a minimart that has them. Also, I can get a lot of pictures on a set of batteries, I've only had them fail on me once. It took me longer to diagnose that's what the problem was than to do something about it.
ReplyDeleteOf course, this comment isn't very helpful if you already have a camera that uses lithium batteries, is it?
Helsie - what a lovely thing to do!
ReplyDeleteWinster: I'll remember that name. And I may get that book and 'armchair-it' from down here for the next year till we get there.
Thank you for another fab walk.