Postscripts from The Peak District (33) - Long Rake, Monyash, Lathkilldale, Over Haddon

Monday 3rd February 2014

Out walking 2 days in a row - now there's a treat! Very windy & cold on top of the moor but positively balmy in the shelter of Lathkilldale!

Another geocaching venture & this, in part, was to finish off bits I'd intended to do last week from the Tissington Trail (Postscript 31) before snow drove me home early

The other part was to visit the source of the River Lathkill before the waters subsided (more on that in a moment), but while the rest of the Dale was walkable.... after 2 dry days I thought that might be possible!

Parked at Parsley Hay again & walked along the Long Rake road towards the quarries passing, en route, the site of Arbor Low stone circle - no time for a closer inspection today!

I'd picked up a couple of 'Sites of Meaning' (S.O.M.) caches whilst walking out this way before & was interested to find more

Carved marker-stones were placed at the 17 possible entry points to the Middleton & Smerrill Parish as a millennium project

This one bears the inscription:

Time, you old gipsy man;

Will you not stay;

Put up your caravan;

Just for one day?

: taken from a Ralph Hodgson poem & suggested by a local man, one of whose grandfathers farmed Arbor Low while the other was station-master at Parsley Hay. In his childhood there was a small quarry here & a gipsy caravan would visit each year, parking in the quarry

Part of the Long Rake inscription which reads:

A dull sky, Feel the cold.

Touch the snow, A lonely landscape.

Hear the wind, See the hills.

It’s freezing cold, And empty

:written by 2 children from Youlgrave Primary School after a visit to the project

'The rakes and spoils of man’s hard toil, has shaped this land'

: composed by ladies who work for the quarry company just across the road from this stone set into the ground beside a stile

Last one of my first 'walk of the day' reads:

'Bright Under Green Limestone Edges. With Queen Ann Lace

and Cranesbill in her Hedges'

:this uses the initial letters of the Parish's newsletter 'Bugle', whose editor sponsored the stone

Off to Monyash where the wind was wild!

Came to look at the old village Pinfold which I'd never noticed before & then  wandered along The Limestone Way to the top of the moor

Returned to the village to pick up clues for a multi-cache which, it turned out, was on my afternoon route!

This is Upper Lathkilldale, easily accessible & less than a mile east of Monyash - from here, southwards, is one of my favourite bits of the whole Peak District!

Hadn't walked the length of Lathkilldale (Postscript 10) since Easter 2008 when I walked the Peak District Inn Way.... & I need to do that again!


The waters of the River Lathkill drain from Flagg Moor, just to the north of Monyash, but this is the first point at which they can be seen - flowing from Lathkill House Cave.... & this is what I'd come to see!

I've walked here in Winter before, in 2008 it was after a reasonably heavy snowfall, but I've never seen as much as a trickle! Like the Manifold (Postscripts 2 & 27), it happily flows underground through the limestone & often doesn't 'rise' until half a mile or more down the valley!

This, though, was quite spectacular & did make me wonder if I'd be able to walk the whole of the Dale!

One possible escape route! Over the splashily accessible footbridge & up through Cales Dale back to Monyash!

Climbed to the upper reaches of the Dale, that's where my mystery multi-cache was hidden, before returning to the Lathkill!

Further downstream the river widened to almost fill the valley-floor in places but there was no way I was going to turn back now!

Remains of the Mandale Mine, one of several very profitable lead enterprises in the Dale

This closed in 1851 after years of flooding problems! An old aqueduct & traces of various leats can still be clearly seen

Beyond the old mill below Over Haddon the valley is wider, the river gentler & the path easy to walk

I carried on to the medieval Conksbury Bridge before taking to the road for my rather lengthy walk back to Monyash.....