It had been a long wait for this walk. All through the Christmas holidays, and an inset day, and weeks and weeks of appalling weather. Now it was the end of January and there was still a dull grey layer of cloud, but at least it wasn't raining. I set out. If you like a good ex-industrial landscape, the Erewash Valley is the place to be. It is veined with old canals and railways, freckled with former factories and mills, and pitted with coal mines. The M1 and a railway run north to south through it, but parts of it still feel surprisingly rural. I had been drawn in by all that there was to discover, so I'd shelved the Portway for a little while and diverted onto the Erewash Valley Trail. I parked in Bramcote Hills Park again and had a quick look at the walled garden, overlooked by the Hemlock Stone. Hickings Lane heads towards the centre of Stapleford. It looks like it should be a dual carriageway but it's not; there are two separate roads with a wide grass strip between th...
Sunny days have been few and far between in this January of 2026. So when the sky turned blue one Saturday, Toby and I decided we needed to get outside. There wasn't time for a ten-miler, so I shortened the next section of the Portway walk and announced that we would do a loop from Dale Abbey to Stanton-by-Dale. This is not unknown territory. We have done a few family hikes around here - in fact, more than I remembered. When we got to Stanton, Toby said, "Haven't I been here before?". I said I didn't think so, but then as we moved along the main street a few memories started to surface. Oh yes, we had walked this way before. And the reason for that is that there are several interesting things to see. We passed the towering east window, all that remains of the abbey at Dale. There were snowdrops blooming outside the odd little semi-detached church (the other half is now a house and was once a pub - an odd pairing!) We slithered down steep steps to look at the herm...