Skip to main content

Dove Valley Walk: Meeting the Limestone Way

At Uttoxeter my route along the Dove Valley met some official long-distance trails. First the Staffordshire Way north to Rocester, then the Limestone Way continuing up towards Dovedale. Graham joined me on today's walk, which included the Staffordshire Way section and the first part of the Limestone Way. Unusually, it was a one-way hike; we got the bus back.


 

Uttoxeter to Ellastone

Graham and I parked at Uttoxeter train station. It's very cheap for the day if you park after 10am, but I was worried about getting back in time for the school run, so we got there at 9:20 and paid the more expensive rate (still only £3). 

We started off across flat fields towards the A50 and Dove Bridge. A group of young cattle gave us hard stares as we walked past. I posted a photo of a wonky gate on the Gate Appreciation Society with the caption "Parallelogate" and it quickly accumulated 200 likes - many more than this post will get!


 

Passing the old Dove Bridge again, we ploughed through long grass, tracking the top edge of Sidford Wood. A weathered Staffordshire Way sign pointed down through the woods, but the green diamonds on the OS map went along the top, so we stuck with that. At length we came out on a small road leading down to a shooting club. "Shooting in progress if red flag is flying," said the sign, but the poor red flag was so bedraggled it didn't look as if it could signify anything any more.



Fortunately all was quiet. We proceeded without threat to our lives; or to the lives of the game birds which ran along the track in front of us. Several of the properties, including this smart farmhouse, belonged to JCB, whose giant factory we would shortly see.



We went straight on past a pond, realised we should have turned left, and came back. The footpath sign had been very well hidden! After a couple more fields we reached the banks of the Dove again, and thought we had made good time getting to Rocester. However, the final stretch was very overgrown and perilously eroded, so our pace slowed down.



Just by the JCB Academy, we spotted a footpath sign with a small hand-written addition saying "Limestone Way". This is the official end of the Limestone Way, which I think would be distinctly underwhelming if you had walked the entire 46 miles from Castleton. It was pretty underwhelming even when we had only come from Uttoxeter.



The church and ancient cross made up for it. We ate our lunch on a bench outside, and two people came past and said, "There's free tea and coffee inside if you'd like some." It was a nice offer, but we were keen to keep moving.


 

We carried on out of Rocester, along the edge of a new primary school. The JCB factory loomed behind, with a huge jet of water in front of it, and a line of yellow diggers over its shoulder.


 The B5030 is not a nice road. We had to cross it twice. The traffic was whizzing past and the lines of sight were extremely short, and we felt lucky not to have been squashed flat. After that things improved; we ambled down a sloping sheep field and followed the bank of the Dove to the pleasingly proportioned Ellastone Bridge.




At this point it was 12:45. I had intended to do one more short segment of the Limestone Way and catch the 2:12 bus, but the timing had worked out well to catch the 1:12 instead. So we turned left into Ellastone village. The Duncombe Arms wasn't hard to spot; the bus stop was next to it, and the Swift bus carried us smoothly and swiftly all the way back to Uttoxeter.


13 km / 8 miles 

1 July 2024

Labels:

Comments

Helen W said…
So amazing you did this in plenty of time for the school run.
22 July 2024 at 15:30
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mr White Watson of Bakewell

Once upon a time, back in 1795 or so, lived a man who was always asking questions.  The kind of questions like, "Why is glass transparent?" or "Why do fruit trees grow better in that place than in this place?" or "What does the earth look like underneath the surface?"  This last question was one that he was particularly interested in, and he went so far as to work out what the rock layers looked like where he lived, and draw little pictures of them.  Now he was a marble sculptor by trade (as well as fossil hunter, mineral seller, and a few other things) so he thought it would be even better to make his little pictures in stone.  That way he could represent the layers using the actual rocks they were composed of.  Over the course of his lifetime he made almost 100 of these tablets, as he called them. Then he died.  And no one else was quite as interested in all those rocks and minerals as he was.  His collection was sold off, bit by bit, and the table...
Post a Comment
Read more

Laid-back Lille and Bustling Brussels

After a night in a tiny AirBnB in Canterbury , where there were chocolates on the table and artwork on every inch of the walls, we boarded a ferry with an absolute minimum of fuss, enjoyed a smooth crossing of the channel, and were deposited in the decidedly unscenic surroundings of the port of Dunkirk two hours later. Once we got past the cranes and shipping containers, though, the countryside was flat but pleasant. We stopped at a small town called Cassel, reached by cobbled roads winding up a hill. On the summit was an old windmill and a topograph telling you the distances to various improbable places; St Omer may have been visible in the haze, but Manchester was surely over the horizon.  In Lille, we found our apartment, unpacked the luggage (one rucksack apiece), and set out to find food. Our first choice was fully booked, so we embarked on that kind of aimless wandering where everyone is hungry and no one wants to actually choose a restaurant. We reached a Lebanese place call...
Post a Comment
Read more

Birmingham: Temples to many things

Birmingham's cathedral is overshadowed by more modern temples: the mirrored swirls of New Street train station; the dotted bulge of the Selfridges store; the lacy blocks of the library; the pillars and pediments of the museum and art gallery. Museum and town hall Next to all these, Birmingham Cathedral, in its square of dusty grass, isolated from the main flow of shopping and travel, seems less like a dominant building and more like a minor chapel. It turns out the unpretentiousness is deliberate. St Philip's Church was built in 1715 when the worshipping population of Birmingham had outgrown the medieval constraints of St Martin in the Bullring . Birmingham remained part of the Diocese of Worcester until 1905, when Charles Gore pushed for the creation of a new diocese and became its first bishop. Seeing the depth of need in the city, he decided to convert St Philip's to a cathedral rather than spend money on a grand new building. Birmingham Cathedral had to be restored afte...
Post a Comment
Read more