Today’s walk was another short one, limited time and questionable weather so we decided to stick relatively close to home. We dropped my daughter off at school, then my mate Ray and I headed for Bakewell for some much needed breakfast. Thankfully we managed to grab our usual parking spot, it’s on the bridge that crosses the Monsal Trail at the top of station road. It was a quick walked back down to our favourite cafe in Bakewell, the Bean and Bag.
After breakfast we headed back across the River Wye towards the farmers market, along the road and took the footpath across the fields that follows the river. We have had a fair bit of rain in recent weeks so as you can imagine the river level was high and the footpath was pretty water logged. We mud plugged our way further down stream until we arrived at the bridge that crosses near Haddon Hall
Over the bridge we went, over the road we carefully crossed and up the fields we paced. We enjoyed the fresh morning air in our lungs and the sound of birds fending off a pair of buzzards that were attempting to raid a nest.
I hadn’t been up this way before so it was a pleasant surprise to be met by a lush green plateau of farmland which seemed to stretch for miles.
In no time at all we were dropping down of the fields in to Lathkill Dale, I wanted to take a closer look at Conksbury Bridge as it has been chucking it down every time I have visited. Conksbury Bridge is a medieval grade 2 listed structure and there looks to have been some drastic alterations to the flow of the river near here. Just up stream a new (since the last time I visited) trench has been dug which now allows the river to flow past a section that is now blocked off. It looks to have changed dramatically since the last time I was here, if anyone has any idea why I would love to know.
We continued on from Conksbury bridge against the flow of the river and up to the weirs half a mile up stream. This is rather a tranquil place to sit and relax but today it was rather boggy at the river bank. I couldn’t resist getting my feet in the river, walking along the river and taking a few images.
(function() { var po = document.createElement(“script”); po.type = “text/javascript”; po.async = true; po.src = “https://d15mj6e6qmt1na.cloudfront.net/assets/embed.js”; var s = document.getElementsByTagName(“script”)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();
Next time I come I’ll remember to bring my tripod, I’d love to get some better pictures of the weir. I managed to hold the camera still enough to get the couple of pictures above, Ray almost fell backwards in the river as he was trying to capture an image too 🙂
Onwards we walked but only for a short a distance, It wasn’t long before we reached the bridge where you have to cross over to the opposite side of the river. We didn’t have enough time to continue on so our route saw us climb up to Over Haddon and leave the valley behind. Over Haddon is a very picturesque village with some very old but great looking houses. We past one house that had the year 1759 engraved in to the stone above it’s very small front door. The village was very quite today, no cars, no coaches and I can only imagine that the tranquility is destroyed when the crowds descend in summer.
From Over Haddon it was a short walk up the road until we joined a footpath which took us in the direction of Bakewell. The point on the map reads “Ditch Cliff” and due to the recent rain the path had turned into what resembled a ditch. Not to worry, we were already muddy up to the eyeballs anyway 🙂
We rejoined the road at the bottom of the footpath, walked along past the school and then took the path near the Graveyard. There are some stunning houses down here, one of those places to mark on my “If I win the lottery” list 🙂
We eventually arrived back down at the bottom of the hill in Bakewell town centre itself, just by the main roundabout. Even though we had only been on a short walk I couldn’t resist grabbing another coffee before we headed home. Back up the hill we walked to our cheap skate parking spot at the old station, jumped in Ray’s car and headed home via Matlock. it had been another great day out walking and we managed to miss most of the rain which seemed to narrowly miss us. Thanks for reading, If you would like to follow the route we walked then you can download the GPX file here -> [wpdm_file id=11]
PeakRoutes.com 