Moreton-in-Marsh, Chastleton and Adlestrop

A Wedding Anniversary Involving A Cotswold Town, a Jacobean House and Village whose Name Inspired a Poem

Gloucestershire

Cotswold District

Scary Photos

Lynne and I were married on this day in 1975.

It has taken us 40 years to get from this (were these two old enough to know what they were doing?)…

Wedding Day, July 1975

...to this. too late now.

Us in 2015
Is it time we talked about the elephant in the room? It seems to be creeping up on us.

Moreton-in-Marsh

This year our annual wedding anniversary glimpse into the world of fine dining took us south into the Cotswolds.

Moreton-in-Marsh

We stopped for a light lunch at a cold and rainy Moreton-in-Marsh. The town was called Moreton-in-the-Marsh until 1930 when the ‘the’ was unaccountably removed - though even locals often re-insert it in conversation to make it easier to say. With or without its article, the name suggests a grim sort of place but, of course, it is not. It is a typical Cotswold small town, built entirely of the local stone which is routinely (and a little tediously) described as ‘honey-coloured’ and ‘mellow’; there is even a house called 'Mellow Stone Cottage'.

Curfew Tower, Moreton-in-Marsh

It is full of square Georgian buildings occupied by banks, younger and older buildings (it is not always easy to tell) housing antique shops, cutesy tea houses, artisan butchers, serious cheese shops and solid-looking, dependable pubs, the sort that have been there for years and are not likely to close down any time soon.

Tea House, Moreton-in-Marsh

We had a half pint of Hobgoblin Gold and shared a ham baguette in one such pub, the Redesdale Arms, built in 1650 of ‘mellow Cotswold Stone’ (I quote their website).

The Redesdale Arms, Moreton-in-Marsh

The 2nd Baron Redesdale, of Redesdale in the County of Northumberland, forsook the frozen north for the gentler climes of the Cotswolds where he brought up his son and six daughters. Each of the daughters achieved a measure of fame, eminence or notoriety under the family name of Mitford. The Mitford sisters are all dead now. Diana, the last of them, died in 2014 and was the only one who did what the daughters of aristocrats are supposed to - marry another aristocrat. As the Duchess of Devonshire she lived at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire (where else?).

Chastleton House

Oxfordshire

Vale of the White Horse

Just far enough away to be buried in the Cotswolds countryside is Chastleton House. Walter Jones came from a family of prosperous Welsh wool merchants but made his pile in the law. In 1604 he bought the Chastleton estate from Robert Catesby, shortly to become the leading conspirator in the Gunpowder Plot, demolished Catesby’s house and built the present Chastleton House. Walter Jones had every hope that he, or his descendants, would become at least baronets, but building the house turned out to be the high point of the family's fortunes.

Chastleton House

Their finances took a serious hit when Arthur Jones, Walter’s grandson backed the wrong side in the civil war. He escaped with his life, due to the quick thinking of his wife when parliamentarian soldiers came to arrest him after the battle of Worcester, and went into exile. He was able to return only after payment of a substantial fine and when the restored monarchy failed to show its gratitude by refunding the money, the descent into penury amid grand surroundings began. It was slow, inexorable and extraordinarily long drawn out, the family finally relinquishing ownership to the National Trust in 1991.

The Great Parlour, Chastleton House

As they never had the money to extend or remodel the house, or even afford much in the way of new furniture, the National Trust inherited a time capsule of Jacobean life. They decided not to attempt to restore the house to a former glory it never had but to conserve it as it was. It is thus a somewhat down-at-heal time capsule (insofar as a capsule can wear out footwear).

The Long Gallery, Chastleton House, At 22m the longest barrel vaulted room in England

Photography is permitted inside, though flash is not, so taking pictures in focus required a steady hand.

The Fettiplace Room, high status bedroom, Chastleton House

The distance from the basement kitchen to the dining room on the far side of the house is striking - they could never have eaten hot food. The large high-ceilinged rooms must have made it almost impossible to heat the house never mind the food, and with oak panelling round so many of the walls, winters must have been cold and dark.

Kitchen, Chastleton House

Outside in the stable yard is a second hand bookshop with a somewhat cursory Wolf Hall exhibition. I have read the book but not seen the television series in which Chastleton played the title role, as well as Thomas Cromwell’s childhood home in Putney. Hilary Mantel’s historical research was meticulous but the television producers were more cavalier as the house was not built until 65 years after Thomas Cromwell was executed.

Stableyard, Chastleton House

Adlestrop

Gloucestershire

Cotswold District

It is only a few minutes drive from Chastleton to Adlestrop.

I do not know when I first encountered Edward Thomas's poem, but it was longer ago than I care to remember. It probably stuck in my memory because of the name, Adlestrop which, at first I believed to be made up. It took me longer to appreciate the poem as more than a piece of pastoral fluff, but I have gradually come to see the point - except for that clunky last line. Adlestrop is right on the boundary of Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire (and Warwickshire for that matter) but did he have to crowbar in this geographical factoid?

Adlestrop

Yes. I remember Adlestrop
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat, the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop—only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire

                                                            Edward Thomas

Adlestrop, pop 120, is real enough - a line of Cotswold stone cottages, all beautifully kept with cottage gardens and hanging baskets full of flowers - but the station, a victim of the Beeching axe in the 1960s, no longer exists. The station sign and one of the benches were saved and now sit in a bus shelter on the edge of the village.

Adlestrop station sign. The plaque by my left elbow is a copy of the poem

Thomas’ train stopped in Adlestrop on June the 24th 1914. The date the poem was written is unknown, but it was published in 1917, the year Edward Thomas was killed in action in the Battle of Arras. The contrast between the rural idyll of Adlestrop and the hell of northern France is extraordinarily poignant.

Edward Thomas was there on a very different day from us. His sunshine was our rain, on a day which was colder than any July day I can remember.

We drove on through Stow-on-the-Wold and towards Bourton-on-the-Water, turning off towards Lower and then Upper Slaughter, two more Cotswold gems, the latter the home of the Lords of the Manor Hotel and Restaurant, our destination for the wedding anniversary meal, and the subject of the next post.

West Wycombe

A Post Intended to be about the Village, but Sir Francis Dashwood Took it Over

Introduction

Buckinghamshire

I think I can legitimately boast that I have done a bit of travelling. Recent journeys are detailed in this blog but there were many more in the decades before blogs - or the internet - existed.

But it was not always like this. I was born in 1950 and for many years holidays meant two weeks with my grandmother in Porthcawl on the South Wales coast. The drive from Iver in Buckinghamshire to Porthcawl, Google tells me, is 157 miles and takes 2½ hours. Back then, when there was no Severn Bridge (it opened 1966) and no motorways, the journey was 180 miles and took over five hours.

From 1951(ish) to 1958 my father owned a grey Standard Vanguard, very similar to this one
(Credit to Wikipedia and Redsimon for the picture)

The first of several bottlenecks was High Wycombe. Just beyond the town on a bare hilltop above the village of West Wycombe was a church with a large golden ball perched on its tower. My mother would mutter something about the 'Hellfire Club' in an appropriately disapproving manner and then say, 'We must go there someday.'

The Hellfire Caves

We never did, but now, over half a century later, I have. The church is still there, though trees have grown up to partially hide it, the road through West Wycombe is still designated as the A40, though it is no longer a trunk road, and the child who bickered with his sister in the back of a Standard Vanguard went grey long ago.

St Lawrence's Church is now hidden by trees, but the golden ball is still there

The Hellfire Caves, lower down the hill, were built between 1748 and 1752. A run of bad harvests threatened starvation and Sir Francis Dashwood, the 2nd Baronet Dashwood, who owned pretty much all there was to own in West Wycombe, saved the day by personally paying the destitute to mine chalk and flint to rebuild the road from West Wycombe to High Wycombe.

Humanitarian as his motives may have been, it would have been cheaper and easier to use the hillside as a quarry than to laboriously scrape out 500m of tunnels linking some seven or eight chambers. And why finish it with a Gothic entrance?

Entrance to the Hellfire Caves, West Wycombe

Sir Francis Dashwood and the 'Hellfire Club'

Like many rich young men of his time Sir Francis Dashwood finished his education with a Grand Tour. Between 1726 and 1731 he visited Italy, Russia and the Ottoman Empire and earned a certain notoriety, not least by attempting to seduce the Tsarina Anne while in Russia. He developed an interest in the religious practices of classical time and a profound disrespect for the Catholic Church.

The Hellfire Caves
500m of tunnels laboriously hacked out by hand

In 1746 along with John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich (and the man who first stuck a slice of meat between two pieces of bread) he founded the Knights of St Francis of Wycombe, dedicated to the veneration of Bacchus and Venus. The knights met at Medmenham Abbey a little way along the Thames from West Wycombe, and seemed to enjoy dressing up, mock rituals and of course the more practical applications of the worship of gods of wine and love. Gentlemen were encouraged to bring lady guests who should be 'of cheerful, lively disposition, to improve the general hilarity '(wanton scarlets, I'll be bound).

In time the club became known as the Hellfire Club. Stories of Black Masses and Satanic rituals began to circulate but they were probably just stories, the members merely had a healthy interest in sex and alcohol (drugs and rock 'n' roll not yet being available). With their understandable aversion to record keeping it is not known who participated in these meetings, but references in correspondence suggest John Wilkes, the radical journalist and politician, was associated with the club, as were engraver William Hogarth and American polymath and diplomat Benjamin Franklin.

To reach the club room guests had to cross an underground stream, the River Styx
Hellfire Caves, West Wycombe

The association of the Hellfire Club with the Hellfire Caves is problematic. It is believed that one or two meetings may have taken place there but much of the association with the caves was made later and probably to promote tourism. But the question remains: ‘Why build the tunnels and the entrance?

Deep in the caves the Hellfire Club is still in session - at least in effigy

I am far from averse to a boozy dinner, but walking through the caves on a warm summer's day was a decidedly chilly experience and I would hesitate to accept a dinner invitation which came with the instruction 'wrap up warm'. A roaring fire might solve the problem, but I doubt the caves have sufficient ventilation. The alcoves off the dining hall were allegedly curtained off for amorous activities but although they could be made comfortable, if not spacious, they could not be made warm, a serious disincentive to the removal of clothing. I suspect, though this is only my hunch, that Sir Francis Dashwood built the caves with his club in mind, but found they did not suit.

West Wycombe Hill

We left the caves and warmed up by climbing West Wycombe Hill.

Lynne climbing West Wycombe Hill

On the way we had a view down the dead straight road to High Wycombe built using the contents of the caves. I suspect it has been rebuilt several times since and the traffic lights are probably not Georgian.

The long straight road to High Wycombe built by Sir Francis Dashwood

We could also see West Wycombe Park, the home of Sir Francis Dashwood.

West Wycombe Park

The Dashwood Mausoleum

On the top of the hill is the Dashwood Mausoleum. Built in 1765 it was financed by a bequest from a friend and is a vanity project if ever there was one. The satirist Paul Whitehead, who had been Club Secretary, left his heart to Sir Francis Dashwood when he died in 1774. The incinerated remains were kept in an urn in the mausoleum, until they were stolen in 1829 – a gift for promoters of tourism who then claimed that his ghost haunted the caves.

The Dashwood Mausoleum, West Wycombe Hill

St Lawrence's Church

St Lawrence's Church behind the mausoleum was built, also by Sir Francis Dashwood, in 1761 though there had been religious buildings on the site since the 7th century. Questions were asked at the time why he should build a church at the top of the hill for the benefit of a village at the bottom of the hill, but it still functions as an Anglican Church, even though a more convenient alternative was built in the village in 1875. The golden ball, 8ft in diameter, can seat six, though what six pople might do in there is a mystery. It is, though, currently closed and I was disappointed to see it was in such poor condition.

St Lawrence's Church, West Wycombe

Lunch in West Wycombe

It was lunchtime, so we descended to the village in search of sustenance. Many of West Wycombe’s buildings, which were constructed between 200 and 400 years ago, are owned by the National Trust and have not been modernised, at least externally.

West Wycombe

The high street is busy and full of parked cars so my photographs do not do it justice. Inevitably it has been used as a film set, most notably in the Importance of Being Ernest in 2002 (Colin Firth, Rupert Everett, Reese Witherspoon) and as Cranford in the television series of the same name.

West Wycombe

Lunch in the George and Dragon, an 18th century coaching inn, was a half of IPA from the Rebellion microbrewery in nearby Marlow and an omelette. It was pricey, as might have been expected, but my bacon and goat's cheese omelette was excellent, the softest and fluffiest I have eaten in ages.

The George and Dragon, West Wycombe

West Wycombe Park: The House

West Wycombe Park was donated to the National Trust by Sir John Dashwood, the 10th Baronet, in 1943, though the Dashwoods retained ownership of the contents. Sir Edward Dashwood, the 12th Baronet, still lives there.

The house is approached through parkland surrounding an artificial lake. In 1698 the estate was bought by Sir Francis Dashwood, the 1st Baronet (and father of ‘Hellfire’ Francis Dashwood) who demolished the existing manor house and constructed the forerunner of the current house. The younger Sir Francis, inspired by his travels in Italy, rebuilt it. It took him 60 years and consequently ‘...encapsulates the entire progression of British 18th century architecture from early idiosyncratic Palladian to Neoclassical...’ (thanks, Wikipedia). It looks a bit of a dog's breakfast to me (noted architectural critic as I am not) with stands of trees cunningly concealing imperfections in symmetry.

The front of West Wycombe Park (which appears to be round the back)

I also have a feeling that houses should have a front and a back and the main entrance, whether you are important enough to use it or not, should be at the front. The entrance to West Wycombe Park feels like it is round the back, though which is back and which front is open to debate.

Lynne sits in the entrance, West Wycombe Park

The guided tour was conducted by a venerable lady who might have been patted on the head as a child by Sir Francis Dashwood himself and seemed to remember every member of the family since. It is a very liveable house, for its date, many of the rooms are manageable in size and unusually well lit.

The ceilings, painted by Giuseppe Bornis, are direct copies from Italian palaces, mainly the Palazzo Farnese in Rome, while the entrance hall ceiling is a replica of a ceiling in Palmyra that had impressed Sir Francis when he visited Syria on the Grand Tour. It is a sad thought that, given the current situation in Palmyra, these copies may be all that survives.

There is some corner cutting: the marble walls of the entrance hall are marble effect wallpaper and, as at Stowe House, the ‘marble’ columns are scagliola.

West Wycombe Park: The Grounds

Like the village, the house and grounds had often been used as a film set. Austenland was filmed here in 2012 as was the forthcoming Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. It has also featured in Downtown Abbey.

The house is surrounded by acres of well-tended greensward dotted with extravaganzas like the Temple of Music on an island in the lake….

Temple of Music, West Wycombe Park

…. and the Temple of Venus. I can only speculate about what Sir Francis intended to do in the cavern beneath the Temple, but it is a dark and dank space, so I expect he did it somewhere else.

Temple of Venus, West Wycombe Park

West Wycombe Park is a less ambitious version of Stowe, its approximate contemporary. The house is much smaller, the gardens have fewer pseudo-classical monuments and the view of the house across the lake is barely Championship compared with Premier League Stowe

West Wycombe Park across the lake
(this is the back, which looks like a front, maybe?)

The Dashwoods, though wealthy, were paupers compared to the Temples of Stowe, but the Temples ran through their fabulous wealth and in three generations went from being richer than the king to the biggest debtors in the land. They were also notoriously arrogant and when they fell few mourned. The Dashwoods have had their ups and downs but they are still here.

I rather like Sir Francis Dashwood. He may have been a rake and a libertine, but he also found time for a serious political career. In 1747 he introduced a bill for poor relief by the commissioning of public works. The bill failed, but he put his money where his mouth was, tunnelling out the Hellfire Caves to save the people of West Wycombe from penury, and he was credited with other humanitarian acts. He was a disastrous Chancellor of the Exchequer for a year in the 1760s but was later a more successful Postmaster General.

For me to criticise a man who enjoyed a good dinner and a glass or three of wine would be immensely hypocritical – and at a time of stifling social conventions when marriage was a business deal, I would not want to judge his horizontal recreations too harshly.

Fun guy - Sir Francis Dashwood in Hellfire Cub Regalia
by Adrien Carpentiers

This post was supposed to be about West Wycombe, but it has almost entirely been about Sir Francis Dashwood, but then he was West Wycombe and to a certain extent he still is. He was a fun guy, but he had his caring side and I am sure he would be pleased, and probably amused, that the villagers he helped in their time of need, today live in a village notable for its affluence.

Walking the Upper Dove Valley

The River Dove from the Source (almost) to Beyond Beresford Dale

At 9 o’clock I met up with Brian near Barracks Farm at the end of Beresford Dale where he found a suitable place to leave his car. Despite cloud cover it was a still and surprisingly warm morning. I drove us north towards Flash, reputedly the highest village in Britain. At 463m (1,519ft) Flash hardly compares with Ushguli, but its modest claim is well attested.

We left my car in a pull-off beside the A53, several hundred metres from the village but at about the same height. In this more exposed position there was a breeze with a cutting edge.

The pull-off on the A53 near Flash

Not Quite Finding the Source of the Dove

Staffordshire

We did not have to go far to find ourselves looking down on the River Dove, and only a little further to make our first navigational error; coming out from the field onto the minor road a hundred metres below where we should have been. Our detour involved stepping over an electric fence; it was not, we found, live, always good news to those of us with short legs.

Brian looks down into the Dove Valley
He is moving to Devon at the end of the month, so is he thinking
a) This is my last chance to enjoy the Peak District countryside
b) Why doesn't that prat hurry up and take the bloody photograph
c) nothing at all?

Derbyshire

For most of its 72km the Dove [now universally pronounced to rhyme with 'love', though traditionally it rhymed with 'rove'] forms the boundary between Staffordshire and Derbyshire. At the bottom of the valley we crossed the river into the barbarian lands of Derbyshire and turned upstream through the area marked on the map as 'Dove Head'. Our path dipped to run briefly alongside the stream; clearly we had not quite reached the source, but we shrugged our shoulders and turned right up the other side of the valley. If Burton and Speke had taken that attitude with the source of the Nile, the whole history of exploration would have been different.

The source of the Dove is down there, somewhere

Between the Dove and Cistern's Clough

Over the top of the ridge we descended slightly to pick up a path contouring along the top of a valley above the oddly named Cistern's Clough which meanders its way south into the Dove. Tracing the stream back on the map it appears to be a more remote source than the official source of the Dove – I do not know what Burton and Speke would have made of that.

Cistern's Clough

Cistern’s Clough wandered off to the east and after a couple of pauses to study the map we found our way to Howe Green, where they have some fine Highland cattle.

Howe Green stands on the base of a triangle of flat, high ground between the Dove and Cistern’s Clough, now wandering back westwards . Our intended path was along the top of the narrow valley of the Dove, avoiding the track that drops into it, and meeting above the confluence with a path along the top of Cistern's Clough. We could not locate the right path, but while we paused, considered the map, walked on, paused again, reconsidered the map and walked on again (and repeat), we had time to notice that the meadow was carpeted with wildflowers.

Wildflowers, Howe Green

Eventually we stumbled upon a post with arrows pointing down the paths along the top of either valley, neither of which we had been on, and a third pointing down towards the confluence. It was a steep little descent to where Cistern’s Clough joined the Dove – though the tributary looked the larger of the two streams.

Starting down to the confluence

Beside the Dove to Hollinsclough

We turned south down the left (Derbyshire) bank of the combined stream. Having lost so much height so quickly, the path’s determined climb back up the valley side was a tad irritating.

Where Cistern's Clough (right) meets the River Dove

Eventually we reached an old road that runs down into the valley from Booth Farm, heading for the minor road to Hollinsclough. Well-made and of some antiquity, presumably a drovers' road, it descends to the river and crosses it on a fine old bridge. A modern road sign warns that the road is limited to vehicles less than 1.8 metres wide, so it is still in use, if only by quadbikes (in theory a Peugeot 208 would just fit - without its wing mirrors - but I have no intention of checking this out).

Looking back up the old road from Booth Farm

Now back in Staffordshire we followed the path along the valley side, or attempted to. It kept on petering out, and then reappearing twenty metres above or below us. When we set off I had thought that we might reach Hollinsclough too early for coffee but the village seemed to retreat down the road as we approached, and we finally arrived at midday. We had taken much longer than expected, mainly because of the time we had spent standing in fields pondering over the map.

The old road crosses the Dove

Hollinsclough

I wrote about Hollinsclough on the Crowdecote walk (Cowpat 6) so all I will say here is that it once used to be a much larger village where people worked on silk weaving, sending their produce over the hill to Macclesfield. The village was also important in early Methodism; the Methodist church still functions and the church hall kindly provides a bench for wanderers to sit and drink their coffee. Down in the sheltered valley it was warm, and the sun even put in a brief appearance.

The Methodist Chapel, Hollinsclough (photographed March 2013)

Hollinsclough to Crowdecote and a Glass of Lunch

Crowdecote is 4km from Hollinsclough, and as we intended to have lunch in the Pack Horse at Crowdecote we did not linger over coffee. Fortunately our onward path was largely level and presented few navigational problems. As the Dove approaches Hollinsclough the valley widens considerably and we set off across it to re-find the river. Ahead of us was the jagged outline of Chrome hill and the strange triangle of Parkhouse Hill, the remains of a tropical reef formed before shifting tectonic plates put this piece of land at its current height and latitude.

Across the Dove Valley towards Parkhouse Hill

We again crossed the Dove – we chose the footbridge rather than the ford – and back in Derbyshire we followed the flat bottom of the valley all the way to Crowdecote. On Cowpat 6: Crowdecote we climbed Hitter Hill en route, but as we were late we carried straight on down the valley, completing the 4 km in an hour.

Alison faces the footbridge/ford decision in Cowpat 6, March 2013

I like the Pack Horse Inn at Crowdecote, indeed I wrote a whole post on their pies. Today's pie was chicken and mushroom, but as Mick the landlord admitted, they are filling, so we settled for 'light bite'gammon steaks and a couple of pints of the Cottage Brewing Company’s ‘Sunset’. The brewery (in Castle Cary, Somerset) calls it 'a golden summer ale...with cascade and nugget hops...a refreshing, easy drinking session ale.' I was thirsty, it had been a warm morning, particularly marching along the flat valley bottom, and the beer winked seductively at me through the condensation on the glass – the first pint disappeared quickly. I can thoroughly recommend CBC’s Sunset; it is a beer that hits a spot and keeps hitting it most pleasantly.

The Pack Horse Inn, Crowdecote (photographed Feb 2012)

Pilsbury Castle

In the afternoon we continued along the grassy valley to Pilsbury Castle, an earthwork sitting on a natural rocky promontory. A motte and two baileys were built in Norman times either to control the area after the 'Harrowing of the North' (1069-70), or during the civil war between King Stephen and the Empress Matilda (1135-54). Either way, the function of the castle is obscure – why guard the upper section of a remote valley which goes nowhere? Despite its apparent uselessness, its doubly tautological name (pils being a Celtic word for fortified place, bury being Saxon for the same thing) suggests ‘Castlecastle Castle’ might have pre-Norman origins. The setting was pleasant on a summer’s day, but in winter it is the sort of place only a madman would care enough about to defend.

Pilsbury Castle and a look back down the Dove Valley

At the castle the path climbs up the valley side, giving good views of where we had been, before continuing along the flat(ish) top.

Along the rim of the Dove Valley

Hartington

To the south the valley widens and the river wanders off to the west, leaving us deep inside Derbyshire – an experience not for the faint hearted. After a couple of kilometres along the valley’s grassy rim we hit the minor road that descends into Hartington. With its village green, duck pond, ....

Hartington Village Green
There were too many parked cars around the green to get a proper photo, but this is what it looked when Francis (not on this walk) and Brian sat beside it in Feb 2012 (no tourists in Feb!)

....mellow grey stone buildings, hanging baskets and flower filled gardens, Hartington is the classic Peak District village and was appropriately full of tourists. Despite its apparent size - and its industry (cheese making) - Hartington has fewer than 400 permanent inhabitants. Brian headed straight for the ice cream shop, an idea so brilliant I would have liked to claim it as mine. Bradwell's ice cream has been made in the village of that name some 25 kilometres to the north for over a century, and a scoop of their cherry-bakewell flavoured ice cream was (almost) as good as a pint of Sunset ale.

Hartington in more summer-y mode

To and Through Beresford Dale

Continuing south from Hartington we descended gently across a limestone plateau....

South of Hartington

...and then entered an area of deciduous woodland; a sign said it was planted in the early 1990s, though it already looks splendidly mature. We re-met the river after its westward wander at the mouth of Beresford Dale where we crossed a bridge back into Staffordshire and civilisation. After flowing down an ever widening valley, the Dove changes character and dives into a series of narrow limestone canyons on its way to the prime tourist spot of Dovedale. Beresford Dale, the darkest and narrowest of these defiles, is less than a kilometre long, and at its end, just before it transforms into Wolfscote Dale, we turned up the lane towards Barracks Farm and Brian’s car.

The River Dove in Beresford Dale

The End of the Walk - and the End of a Chapter

We finished about 5.30, later than intended, but a long morning had required careful navigation. Sunshine had been only an occasional visitor, but it had been a pleasant day and as warm as you want for walking. On our way back to Flash, Brian regretted that we had ventured out on fewer such walks since retirement than he had hoped, and with his imminent removal to Devon there would now be even fewer opportunities. He was right, getting together during busy retirements has proved harder than expected, but I have photographic records over the last 7 years of 19 such walk (though previously only The Limestone Link has been on the blog), not to mention Cowpats, Chip Walks, the annual South West Odyssey, and several more outings of which there is no record.

This was a good walk to finish a chapter, but there will be more…..

approximate Distance: 18 km