Skip to main content

Limestone Way - the end! (for now...)

Bonsall is a pretty little village just up the road from Cromford. It was the centre point for my final Limestone Way walk. First I walked one way, back towards Ible, then I walked the other way to Matlock.


I started at the fountain and climbed up to a tree in which a mistle thrush was singing loudly (helpfully identified by the Merlin app). A few fields took me across to the hamlet of Slaley. Then there was a pleasant walk through the woods, which dropped steeply to my left down to the Via Gellia. At Dunsley Springs the stream went right over the edge. 




I made my way down more gradually, and then was faced with the long climb up again to the point near Leys Farm where I was rejoining the Limestone Way.

Tree down!

Rejoining the Limestone Way

Once I'd reached the top, it was a very pleasant walk across dry grassy fields. There were signs of old mining activity, which suddenly made the ground feel less solid under my feet - how many holes were hiding under the turf?



Back at Bonsall, I admired a shed with a mammoth collection of signs attached to it, and found a bench with a view for lunch.



A roughly paved path took me back down to the centre of Bonsall. The pub was hung with a Derbyshire flag but hadn't updated its sign from Charles II to Charles III. Do you suppose our present king has made it onto any pub signs yet?


Then it was uphill again. Technically I was on a restricted byway, with some quite nice stone wheel tracks, but a fallen tree and some wall collapses meant it would have been difficult to get any kind of vehicle up there now. 


Suddenly the views opened up to the north. I could see for miles! Up the Derwent Valley and over to the hills beyond. I was so glad I'd saved this walk for a sunny day. To the west, Matlock appeared, with the distinctive landmark of Riber Castle to the south of the town.

looking north

Riber Castle dead centre

It was a lo-o-ong downhill to Matlock. Great fun to descend, but I was already calculating how much of this I would have to go up again to get back to Bonsall. And when I reached the sign marking the end of the Limestone Way, my first thought was, "That would be a killer of a start, going up that hill!" My second thought was, "25 miles to Castleton? That's only a couple of days' walking. Tempting..." 

Matlock to Castleton was the original route; it was later extended to Rocester. I'd just walked the extension, from Rocester to Matlock, which is why I finished at the start. Does that make sense?

path through holly trees

almost there!


I now retraced a short part of the climb before heading for the Heights of Abraham, above Matlock Bath. I passed the church of St John the Baptist, built above a spring and owned by the Friends of Friendless Churches. At the Heights of Abraham, it was too early in the season for the cable cars to be running. The site stood peacefully, waiting for visitors.

spring at St John the Baptist...

...and the church above



There were some uphill stretches, and a bit of mud, but nothing too bad. At Ember Farm I came out on a small lane which I followed back to Bonsall. St James' Church boasted "Jimmy's Cafe" with an impressive array of cakes. I settled for a coffee, admiring my surroundings as I drank it. The cafe tables were squeezed in around the pews, and there were plenty of heaters to keep customers warm.


steps up to the chancel

The church is built into a hill, so the chancel is five steps up from the nave - an arrangement I'd never seen before. 



From the church it was a short distance to the car park (£2 in an honesty box) on the wonderfully-named Clatterway. I'd finished the Limestone Way. Derwent Valley Heritage Way, here I come!


(Although, if I disappear for two sunny days, I'll be walking from Matlock to Castleton. Don't worry, I'll get the train home.)

Near Ible - Matlock, 3 March 2025

8.8 miles, 14.5 km



Labels:

Comments

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

A mini-pilgrimage to Derby Cathedral

On a sunny day near the end of June, I set out to walk from my village of Findern to Derby Cathedral. If this had been 1826 or even 1926, this would have been a perfectly normal activity. In 2026, no one spends two hours walking to the nearest city. They drive, or catch a bus. It feels faintly subversive to ignore the more obvious modes of transport and to set off on foot. Priory Way, the footpath north out of Findern, is on the Six-Inch series of OS maps from the late 1800s. It has probably not changed much, give or take a few electrical pylons. The fields and farms are still there. Butterflies flew over bright yellow flowers of lady's bedstraw; a hare paused to look at me; a squirrel panicked and almost ran over my toes. After a few miles I came out at Heatherton Pond, greeting its more manicured path with relief. This is now the edge of Derby city; the boundary runs just south of the lake. However, I was surprised at how much more green space I encountered. A cycle path took me ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sheffield Cathedral: dogs and lions welcome

Earlier in the day I had caught the train up from Derby and visited Rotherham Minster . The Supertram from Rotherham brought me to Sheffield Cathedral just as the clock struck two. I realised as I left the tram that I had totally forgotten my cathedral passport until now. Rotherham may not have had a stamp anyway, though I probably could have got the vicar's signature or something, but I dug the passport out of my bag to be sure to remember it. The shop had a stamp, I was told, and so it did. Formalities completed, I went to explore Sheffield Cathedral. It's a strange jumble of a building; "one of those forever unfinished places" as an architectural journal  describes it. This view along the church towards the east end makes it look pretty standard - a medieval chancel and a Victorian-renovated nave. But if you turn ninety degrees to the north, there is another long axis - a regimental chapel that leads through to the Chapel of the Holy Spirit. At one point in the 193...
Post a Comment
Read more