Farley Moor and more ...

On Farley Moor, above Matlock, you can wander through the Forestry Commission plantation ... and lose yourself, metaphorically I mean.

Park along the road from Sydnope Stand, pass through the gate and head straight away from the road ...

In this woodland, we found a Chinese Lantern that had run its course. There has been talk about these being fire starters ... it makes you wonder.



Keep straight on ...



 ... until you see a wall in the distance ahead of you ...





Benjamin stood at the wall as I explained that my father, his great grandfather, had reclaimed the fields beyond the wall from the surrounding moorland. Dad's hard work still fills me with awe as well as pride ...

It's not the best of land but Dad grew crops on this ground and kept sheep and cattle. I used to be able to wander these fields until he died and the farm was sold.

The only livestock we could see were some Highland Cattle ...



 We left the past behind us and headed into the future ...



 Farley Moor is still a working environment and we took due note of this sign ...



 A largish area had been cleared ... ready for replanting ? If so what with ? Broadleaf trees ?



 We were soon back into the trees. You can almost feel the warmth in these photos ...




  
We reached the boundary of the access land ...



 We looked across the ugly barbed wire fence towards Darley Dale where I live ...



 We had a coffee at this point sheltering under the trees rather than in the glare of the sun. We headed back towards the start though the path was vague ...
 
   

Once we'd found the path it was plain sailing all the way back ...





  This walk was followed on the 23rd April 2011
 
Length of stroll ~ 1.93 miles *
 
Total mileage walked so far in 2011 ~ 131.05 miles
 
Total mileage between the 1st September 2009 and the 23rd April 2011 ~ 659.10 miles

  29 of 2011 [which means in 2011 I was averaging just over 4.5 miles a walk.]
 
* distance calculated on Ordnance Survey's Getamap 

Back to Whitesprings ...

Just a few weeks after I'd first visited Whitesprings I went back there with my grandson. There's nothing that is quite so exciting for an eleven year old as an old ruin ... and I'm talking about the old farmhouse, not me.

The first thing Benjamin had to do was squeeze through the squeezer stile ...

Benjamin's a bit of a photographer like me ...



 After following the clear cut paths/trails we tackled some rougher stuff which brought us to a gate leading onto the moorland known as Big Bumper Piece ...

 

We didn't go onto the moorland though. We stayed in the woodland and visited the pond where I'd seen the frogspawn ...



 Benjamin negotiated a dangerous woodland torrent ...



 Then we reached Whitesprings ...







On the way back, on this short walk, we passed a redundant old squeezer stile ...



We finished at the entrance to Whitesprings Plantation. As you can see Benjamin is rather shy ... like me ...



 This walk was followed on the 27th March 2011 [and I have also added in the 14 mile walk I undertook on the 25th March 2011]
 
Length of walk ~ 1.77 miles *
 
Total mileage walked so far in 2011 ~ 90.49 miles
 
Total mileage between the 1st September 2009 and the 21st March 2011 ~ 618.54 miles
 
  20 of 2011 [which means in 2011 I was averaging just 4.52 miles a walk. This from the man who had once walked 56 miles in 24 hours ...]
 
* distance calculated on Ordnance Survey's Getamap

Looking for Whitesprings ...

To the north-east of the Darley Dale are a number of Forestry Commission woods that are open to the public. I parked on Flash Lane and walked into one of them, Seventy Acre Wood ... 

 

... and followed a track ...

 

... until I reached Back Lane ...

 

Back Lane is an unclassified road linking Flash Lane and Sydnope Hill. As it gets nearer Sydnope Hill it gets much rougher than it is shown above and local motor cyclists [who like a bit of rough] like it.

I entered Whitesprings Plantation on the other side of Back Lane ...



I followed a track into the woodland ...





Tracks and paths wander here and there in the plantation. One bought me to this line of beech trees which made me wonder if this is an old nursery ...





I followed another path in a vaguely westerly direction which led to a gateway suggesting that there may once have been fields here ...



The path led to the 'upper reaches' of Halldale Brook where it is crossed by a fairly substantial bridge ...





I realised at this stage that I had probably strayed outside the 'open access' land but when I found a squeezer stile I did wonder who it was for ...



Finally I found what I had been looking for, the remains of Whitesprings ...



This old farm was covered in so much ivy I could have walked past it ...





I looked around the ruins trying to work out what was what ... or what had been what ...



I came away thinking about the lives that had been lived there.

Some years ago I met a man called Hopkinson who had lived here as a boy. He died 15 or 20 years ago in his 70s so I suppose he was talking about the early part of the 20th century when the Hopkinsons were here.

  A pretty good path leads away from the old farm ...





I wandered through the plantation and found a pond ...



  ... full of frogspawn ...



 Eventually though all roads head home and I came back to Back Lane ...



 The afternoon walk ended with me photographing this warning notice ...



Some visitors to this area are not so keen on the beauty of the landscape as much as misbehaving with each other ...

This walk was followed on the 19th March 2011
 
Length of walk ~ 3.09 miles *
 
Total mileage walked so far in 2011 ~ 69.66 miles
 
Total mileage between the 1st September 2009 and the 19th March 2011 ~ 597.71 miles
 
17 of 2011
 
* distance calculated on Ordnance Survey's Getamap

Walking with The Boy ...

Benjamin was ten when I took him up to explore a Forestry Commission wood near where I used to live until I was about his age.

The wood is named as Bown Piece and it's only in the last year or two that walkers have been able to explore this wood ... open access and all that.

It's hard to describe a walk like this because although there are some paths on the ground they're often not marked on a map ...

  

Half the fun is just following your nose knowing that you can't get lost in a small wood like this ... can you ...

Find a branch that's the right height and smooth enough and you can sit and have a chat about life and both learn something ...

 

We reached the corner of the Five Fields and I looked across to the spot where Benjamin's great grandfather died 50 years ago. Was it the right time to tell him something of that death. I decided not ...

  

... not today.

I suppose these trees were growing up as I grew up nearby though some of them have probably been around longer than me ...

 



Then we got lost ... a bit ...
 

Once we'd found our way again we were following a good path ...

 

Time for a 'group' shot !

 

Before we knew it we'd found the path which led us back to the car.

 

What I couldn't understand was why the path was so distinctive in places and in other places it just didn't exist.

This walk was followed on the 29th January 2011

  Length of walk ~ 0.96 miles *

 
  Total mileage walked so far in 2011 ~ 32.63 miles

  Total mileage between the 1st September 2009 and the 29th January 2011 ~ 561.68 miles

   10 of 2011

 
* distance calculated on Ordnance Survey's Getamap