In Derbyshire Dales 1926

Derbyshire Dales001Post:        Charlie compiled a miscellany of tales detailing several excursions into Derbyshire, together they are too long, so here is the first offering.

I was bound like a child, by some magical story,

Forgetting the South and Ionian Vales,

And thought that dear England had temples of Glory,

Where any might worship in Derbyshire Dales.

One of the happy hunting grounds for we Lancashire cyclists, is that section of the North Midlands that is deeply indented with cliff-bound, narrow ravines known as the Derbyshire Dales.  Here nature has bestowed her gifts of greenery lavishly, and time has made its impression in the limestone rock by weathering it into the most fantastic shapes or creating great bulging precipice, beneath which run the crystal waters of the Derbyshire streams.  Many times have we turned our wheels into the these glorious dales, sometimes following their courses by road, and sometimes by path, in all the seasons of the year, and never have we failed to find something new, something different on each occasion.

My first visit to the Derbyshire Dales was made nearly four years ago (1923), when Tom and I left Manchester at an early hour and found ourselves in Buxton before 11am.  From that fashionable spa, the Bakewell road took us into Ashwood Dale, woefully ruined by the appropriation of the dale for sewage and gas purposes.  Here and there one sees, in little, undefiled spots, what Ashwood Dale was before Buxton laid its ruthless hands upon it, and in one place, the much visited Lover’s Leap runs into it.  This is a sheer-sided gorge, down which a little stream finds a course, and seen as we once saw it, when melting snows sent the stream into the gorge in a fine little fall, and filled the bed of the ravine with surging water, is to see it at its best.  Two miles from Buxton, Wye Dale takes the place of Ashwood Dale, and one sees the limestone cliffs go higher, and the river Wye loosened from its paved bed to take a more natural course.  Here again its proximity to a town and its limestone formation have been its undoing, for in the most part, it has been hopelessly despoiled by quarrying on a large scale.

The Bakewell road climbs out of the dales at the end of Wye Dale, returning into this ‘Ravine’ of the Wye in Taddington Dale.  From the road summit, above Wye Dale, Tom and I were able to take a bird’s eye view down to the gorge below, but the view is spoiled by quarrying.  Right across, a sweeping valley has been turned into one huge quarrying concern, making Great Rocks Dale into an eyesore rather than a scene of natural grandeur.  Still, I suppose it is necessary that certain beauty spots shall be given up to the hand of ‘civilisation’, and it is a matter to be thankful over that the best have been left intact.  So to get back to our ride.  A byway led us downhill between the crags of limestone into Miller’s Dale.  This is perhaps the most popular of the Dales with the exception of Dovedale, on account of its accessibility.  The river opens out into a kind of lake, upon which is always an assortment of ducks, usually ravenously hungry.  On the hillside lies the village of Miller’s Dale, and then farther down, the dale takes on a more characteristic appearance, and shows some magnificent cliffs.  From Miller’s Dale, we took the tiny, barren Tideswell Dale, to Tideswell, a rather quaint little town possessing a fine old church that is often termed the ‘Cathedral of the Peak’.

Thence our way lay across a tract of grassy moorland into the dusty, broken Bradwell Dale, in which is located Bagshawe Cavern, the most wonderful stalactitic cavern yet discovered in Derbyshire.  Bradwell Dale gives access to the Hope Valley, not a dale in the Derbyshire sense of the word, but an open valley, very much like the Welsh Vale of Clwyd or the Tanat Valley.  From Hope, our way lay along a winding, narrow lane by the railway and the river Noe into the Vale of Edale.  Edale is magnificent; it is more Welsh than Derbyshire – perhaps more Lakeland than Welsh, as it is deep-seated amid the moorlands, and ends in a cul-de-sac.  From Edale village the road climbs up to Rushup Edge in many a sharp upward lurch and many a hairpin bend, and from the summit one sees the dale below in all its beauty.  The best time for Edale is late Autumn, when the moors around are ablaze with bracken, and the valley is tinted with russet and green admirably blended.  The end of Edale was the end of the Derbyshire Dales for us that day, but the beginning of numerous visits into that region, each one proving more ambitious than the rest.

So now I propose to give a few extracts from my diary, and as befits, I will start with the Ravine of the Wye, when we followed the footpath from the end of Wye Dale to Miller’s Dale, in that wonderful glen, Chee Dale.  It was our second visit to Chee Dale, but the first successful one, as on the first occasion, heavy floods made it impassable.

Sunday: October 4, 1925.

Just as the road tilts upwards to leave the Ravine (of the Wye) and climb Topley Pike, we abandoned it, passing through a gateway and traversing a cart track which was strewn plentifully with flinty stones and led to a small lime works, from where we reached the row of cottages at the commencement of Chee Dale.  It was raining heavily, and the atmosphere was stuffy and misty, whilst the paths were heaving in mud.  The limestone cliffs were taller and sheerer here than hitherto, and the path deteriorated to a mere track.  A youngster informed us that the Stepping Stones would probably be submerged but that did not deter us.  One or two stiles and a rough crossing of broken rock and flinty outcrop brought us to where we had been finally checked last time.

The river was lower and we perceived that though it ran flush with the bulging cliffs, stones had been placed at regular – or rather irregular intervals to enable one to get round, so we shouldered the bikes and stepped out to them.  We found that we weren’t traversing a bed of roses however, for these stepping stones either came to a point, or rocked, or were partially submerged, each stone possessing its own peculiarity calculated to inconvenience the ‘stepper’.  Besides this, they were too near the side, and the overhanging rock caused us to bend down here, or lean outwards there, the while we poised artistically with the bikes on our shoulders on some wobbling stone.  Half-way along was a little beach on which we rested and sheltered.  Oh, but the scenery was magnificent, the great rock bastions, the swirling river, and the delicate shades that autumn had given to the woods.  White and grey were the cliffs, green and clear was the water, which leapt in many little cascades, turning to creamy white; brown and gold and green in an infinite variety of shades decked the trees, and grass and undergrowth, nettle and bramble put a finishing touch to the pageantry of colour.

We managed to get across the stepping stones alright, though as a matter of course we got our feet rather waterlogged, a regular Sunday happening that is liable to obtain even during a heatwave !  In comparison with the route that followed, the stepping stones faded into insignificance.  The general surface was composed of clay set on a camber steep enough to make us slip continually into a morass, in which grew dense masses of nettles.  Then here and there was a little crag of limestone to be surmounted, and only Chee Dale clay is slippier than Chee Dale limestone.  The best way to get along – and by far the easiest – was by carrying the bike all the time.  A huge bastion of sheer rock towered over the river, Chee Tor, whilst a backward glance revealed the bulging cliffs overhanging the Stepping Stones.  Then the dale narrowed, and the Wye flowed swiftly into a deep, silent pool hemmed by an impassable precipice, over the edge of which leaned stately trees.  Longfellow might have had this in mind when he wrote:

“Reflected in the tide the grey rocks stand

And trembling shadows throw;

And the fair trees lean over side by side,

And see themselves below”.

A long narrow plank, half-rotted, crossed the river, and as we trod warily across we could feel it bend and creak before our weight, then on the other side the path climbed to the top of the cliffs, so near the edge that a slip on the clay or rock would ensure an impromptu dive into the pool.  Then it descended to the river again beyond the channel, and a stouter plank bore us back across the river, where we came up against the toughest problem we had ever faced.  We had to scale a 10 foot crag, across the top of which had fallen a great tree, with two fork branches entirely blocking the way.  On the right the crag dropped sheer to the river, and to the left the roots of the tree were like a wall, whilst on the other side a steep slope of clay ended over the cliff.

We tried different methods without success, until we hit on the plan of holding the bike as high as possible from a little ledge, and Tom, leaning over the tree, managed to hoist it to the other side.  As soon as he left the tree with it, he started to slide down the clay slope despite vigorous efforts to keep a foothold.  Things got desperate; meanwhile I tried to get round the roots to help, arriving on the scene just as he was nearing the edge.  Relieved of the bike, he soon gained a firm foothold.  So much for one, but obviously that plan would not do again, so with a change of tactics, I got astride the tree trunk, Tom lifted the bike over his head, I leaned over and grasped it, pulling it over to the other side, then Tom regained the treacherous clay and ‘dug himself in’ by his heels, carefully drawing the bike across.  Then I found that I could not get off the tree, and had to work my way backwards to where I could get a hold.  It had taken us over half an hour to get our bikes over a tree trunk !   Our clothing was full of clay; it showed in big, yellow-brown patches all over my black alpaca jacket, and our sodden shoes were thick with it, but the wonderful scenery around made up for the discomfort; if not, why the very fun of dragging a bike over the obstacles made us satisfied.  After that we had a long walk by the river, through mud and over crags in the beautiful woods, carrying the bikes nearly all the time.  Skirting a sinister-looking morass, we passed the end of another dale, and then, progress being more or less easy, we came to Miller’s Dale.  The two and a half miles of Chee Dale had taken over three hours, and we recorded it as the hardest scramble with bikes we had ever had – and one of the loveliest.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>