No Foolow like an old Foolow

This weeks walk went to one of Derbyshires old '100' villages - Foolow. You can see more information about the village here; http://www.letsgo-foolow.co.uk/

We began the walk at Wardlow, a small hamlet above Cressbrook dale, which is where we were headed first.

This is the view across the dale to Litton village.

Rather than dropping into the dale, as we (and most other people) usually do, we decided

to walk along the top to get a different perspective. This is looking down into the dale Unfortunately, the weather wasn't that good for photography, so I just did the best I could.

We came upon this guy re-building the stone walls for English Nature.

He was steadily transforming this.........

......into this. How beautiful and satisfying!

This lump of limestone poking up in the dale in called Peter Stone.

Looking up the dale to Wardlow Mires, an even smaller hamlet, home of one of our favourite pubs, the Three Stags Heads.

There was some really lovely fungi about at this time of year.

We dropped into the dale, and someone decided that climbing to the top of Peter Stone would be a good idea.

Can you see the 'someone' who's idea it was?

Yes, yes, alright Sue - look, that's usually MY job!

The view from the top.

Looking back to Peter Stone, and taking a shot.

We climbed out of Wardlow Mires along the strangely-named 'silly dale'?

Nice, plump rose-hips.

And lovely looking elderberries (but VERY acidic and tannic to taste).

We reached the much larger village of Bradwell. You can read more about its history here;

http://www.aboutderbyshire.co.uk/cms/places/bradwell.shtml

This is Bradwell brook, after which Bradwell ('broad stream') was named.

The stream flows under this building. I've only seen this once before, in the Lake District.

Bradwell church.

By now the sun was out (hooray!!) and it was getting quite warm. Today's walk was about 12 miles, but had almost 2,000 feet of ascent. Sue & I were about to find out where most of those feet were, as the climb up to the moors was a very stiff one!

Looking (huff, puff) back to Bradwell during the climb.

The huge blot of Hope cement works can be seen, as can the scoop of Mam Tor, and the great ridge.

We reached Brough lane, and continued on across the moors in now pleasant weather.

This huge landslip is off the road, near Abney.

It looked quite dramatic in the shadows of the sunlight.

LOTS of winter food here for the birds, an abundance of berries.

After another very steep climb, this was the view back to Abney Grange.

He was looking for a girlfriend, I think!

An old red phone box, now disused. It had a notice in it saying that BT would sell the box to residents of the village for just one pound, as long as they kept it in its present position, and maintained it.

As I was reading this notice, amazingly, the phone rang! I couldn't resist, and picked it up. Can you believe it was one of these 'get out of debt' calls? What are the chances of that happening? Me passing at JUST the right time. The box can't make outgoing calls, but is still able to take incoming ones. I was really amused at that call :-)

We reached Foolow village next, complete with duck pond and resident white ducks. I'm not sure how true it is, but I've been told anyone who buys the house at the side of the pond has to sign to look after and feed the Foolow ducks.

We left Foolow, and what happened next was a REAL treat. The sky was now pristine-clear, but with stray clouds moving across it. This gave us that phenomenon where the shafts of light strike through the clouds in the most amazing light show! These are just a few of the ones I took. They look good, but to actually witness this for the last hour of sunlight was amazing. Click on any picture for a larger version.

Enjoy!