It was such a beautiful sunny day today - more like summer than spring. L & I headed down the lane to Lea Bridge and set off on a circular walk around Lea, Dethick and Holloway - three pretty villages in the Derbyshire Dales. Parked my tiny red car in the car park belonging to Smedley's Mills ("home of fine knitware") by the river Derwent and walked back up towards Lea. A tarmac path between stone walls leads across a field and up to High Lane where there is a hidden footpath through pines and rhodedendroms by the side of The Old Chapel. This brought us out by Lea Rhodedendrom gardens, which were open and busy with visitors. A peep over the wall showed that the flowers were out and a blaze of gaudy colours. It has been an unusually dry April, but this didn't seem to have done anything to tone down the carnival colours in this well known spring garden set in a former quarry.
Our path curved away and down through houses into Lea, where we emerged onto the main road again opposite the Jug and Glass pub. I never knew before, but according to our walking guidebook, the pub was once a row of cottages of which part was used as a hospital back in Victorian times. It's said that Florence Nightingale of nearby Lea Hurst tried her first nursing here - no doubt much to the disgust of her wealthy parents.
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| The Jug & Glass pub |
Carrying on up the lane we turned right at a stile and descended a flight of damp stone steps to cross a brook in Swine Park Wood, before emerging into a grassy field closely cropped by sheep, who had lambs skipping around them. The bluebells in the wood were only just coming into bloom, unlike the masses of blue flowers we had seen in sunnier Oxhays Wood the weekend before.
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| Manor Farm, Dethick |
Ahead of us was the little hilltop church of Dethick, which is such a tiny hamlet it consists of little but the church and a couple of farms. Manor Farm incorporates parts of an older hall which belonged to the Babington family, the home of ill fated Anthony Babington who was born in Dethick in 1561. Made a ward of George Talbot Earl of Shrewsbury at the age of ten, it is said that he fell under the spell of Mary Queen of Scots, who was being kept a political prisoner in England with Talbot her warder. Anthony was later executed for his part in a plot to free the captive queen from Wingfield Manor, a few miles away. Legend has it that he had a tunnel dug towards the Manor, from a house which he owned in nearby Crich (now demolished).
The rise on which the church sits gives the chance to sit and admire beautiful views across the wooded valley towards Holloway, and beyond to Black Rocks at Cromford. It really is a lovely spot, and it being about 1pm we took the opportunity to stop for a picnic lunch of cheese strings, corn snacks, lemon drizzle cake and clementines.
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| View from near the church |
Back on the main road through Lea, we walked up past several old stone cottages until reaching a footpath sign on the right which led off behind some houses and into fields. This stretch of the walk included an old sunken lane, which had become partially impassable because of a stream of water and a fallen tree, but fortunately some kind landowner had allowed a 'permissive path' alongside, which kept us from wet feet. The next stretch of path was an uneventful stroll over fields and round a rather smelly dairy farm where swarms of brown flies rose buzzing from cow pats as we passed. Through a stile and onto another lane, this time dropping into Upper Holloway - a pretty hamlet with several attractive and very well kept cottages, whose gardens backed onto a small quarry. This is my favourite time of year, when cherry blossom, blackthorn blossom, tulips and aubretia make bursts of colour in every garden, and the foliage has just come onto the trees, a fresher and brighter green than it will ever be in summer.
Holloway itself is a larger village, and even has a couple of shops - a butchers and a craft studio. Sadly, despite the enticing sight of coffee cups in the window of the latter it proved to be closed. So we followed the instructions in our guidebook until reaching a footpath to the rear of Lea Hurst - Florence Nightingale's one time home. The path curved round a wall and off alongside what looked (by the age of the gnarled trees) to be a very old piece of parkland. We were surprised to notice a couple of fallow deer there, one a stag with very fine antlers, alongside some placid looking sheep and an alpaca!
At this point we decided that we had taken a wrong turn, a suspicion which seemed to be confirmed by the sight of a couple of elderly walkers marching confidently off across the field in a different direction. But our path, rising gently towards some woodland, looked on my map to emerge on the same road, so we decided to chance it. This proved a happy accident as Lea Woods proved not only to be attractive and with a good dry path, but we also had the privilege of seeing two red foxes suddenly burst from the undergrowth and chase madly through the trees. We did wonder where the trail would lead, but by some serendipity it brought us almost precisely to the car park where we had started the walk.
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