Peak

Peak Forest is a small village high in the Peak District National Park. Its little primary school accommodates just thirty five pupils. In wintertime, it can be very bleak up there. Drivers speed through - usually heading for Buxton, Manchester, Chapel-en-le-Frith, Chesterfield or Sheffield with their heaters fanning out warm air. Mostly they don't stop.

Yesterday, I drove out there and parked at a remote crossroads, near to the course of the Batham Gate Roman road which once led legionnaires back and forth from northern defensive fortifications to the mineral baths at Buxton. I undertook a wide circumnavigation of the village having planned the route beforehand. The greyness of the Pennine morning gave way to a delightful afternoon with more blue sky than clouds.

It took almost four hours and led me past hill farms, sturdy stone houses, old lead mine workings, windswept coppices and a network of ancient limestone walls. How beautiful and how very lucky I am to live close to such loveliness though I am not sure I'd have said that if rain had been pelting down. Here's a selection of yesterday's photographs, please click to enlarge:-

Traffic crawling up Hernstone Lane

Cattle posing near Mount Pleasant Farm

Looking towards Mam Tor from Old Moor

Typical Peak District vista

Cutting the grass south of Peak Forest - my favourite picture of the day

This section of road is on the course of Batham Gate Roman road leading up to Kemp's Hill but mostly the old road strikes across fields and is difficult to decipher - even from aerial imaging

Driving sheep down the main broad in the hamlet of Wheston