Walk Diary               Sunday 22 January 2012              Weather, 9⁰ C. Rather windy.

Rowsley, Peakland Village.          Depart 10 am        8 ½ miles      Leader: David Davison

Once again, we availed ourselves of the facilities of free and excellent parking behind the shopping centre at Rowsley and, of course, finished by staying on for a cuppa and, for some, a browse in some of the shops. Fifteen people decided it was a good enough day for a walk, most not knowing that the first three miles would be in a generally upward direction. It just so happened that it was into a very strong headwind, making this task all the more difficult, but those out today showed their fitness by gritting their teeth and conquering the first 2 ¼ miles in fifty minutes and just to show how kind I am, we then stopped for a coffee break, with picturesque views of the Chatsworth estate before us. So happy were the group, that one of them decided to fly a kind of home-made kite, I think that the string must have broke, as we watched it take off into the heavens, lifted ever higher on huge gusts of wind, until it had gone so far that we were unable to see it anymore; by now it has probably reached the North Sea. To get to this place, we had taken the road to pass St. Katherine’s Church - this St. Katherine, a rich lady of 4C Alexandria, beheaded and martyred for her faith. The road turned to rough track soon after leaving habitation and continues ever upward to Manners Wood, which borders the Haddon and Chatsworth estates, through which we passed to take our break.

After the excitement of our break, it was now on to cross Calton Pastures and on to the highest point of the walk, Moatless Plantation. The walk across the pastures was hampered by very strong gusty winds, it felt like 100 mph, some gusts strong enough to stop us momentarily in our tracks, a more realistic figure would be somewhere around 60 mph. We eventually rounded the high point at nine hundred feet above sea level, to gain another track to a road and after a half a mile we turned down another rough bridleway to Edensor. We had witnessed the appearance of many rainbows during the morning's walk, but experienced very little rain, what there was soon blew over but, during our descent into Edensor, we saw some spectacular ones, so close as to be in touching distance. You will see two pictures of two halves of the same rainbow, because I was unable to get them in one shot and had I realized that the camera had a panorama button, I could have stitched the two together, but alas I am not that clever.

We sat for lunch at Edensor, in what I described as a Ha Ha, a moat like ditch with wall on one side and parkland on the other, it acted as a shelter from the wind but not from some heavy showers. Lunch over and nobody willing to sit around too long, we moved off to pass Maud’s Plantation, before dropping down to the road at Calton Lees, a slight pause as we regrouped for the last stretch of the walk along the Derwent Valley Heritage Way, that runs parallel to the west of the river. Quite a bit of mud along this part and especially near the farm yard at the end, considering the conditions above and underfoot we made remarkably good time, completing the 8.7 miles in three and a half hours, not that, as some would suggest, I was trying to break any records. So well done everyone, ‘you all did very well’.