Youlgreave

• Walked: 27 January 2008
• Distance: 17.5m
• Total time 8 hrs
• Terrain: some steep climbs. Total ascent: 200m (lowest point to highest point)
• Summary: Starting at Alport, along the Lathkill Dale, onto Limestone Way via Moneyash, Midshires way and on to Middleton, divert south East to pick up Limestone Way back to Youlgreave.

Every so often you get an unexpected overwhelming "it's all too beautiful" moment. That happened today. It was unexpected partly because we hadn't expected such great weather, and partly because I hadn't realised how high we'd be going. (I'll have to learn what those orange lines mean!)

The first half of this walk is down in dales and cycle routes. Even this was far more beautiful than I'd expected. From Alport, we used a track to get to Over Haddon, and then down into the Dale. The first part of the path alongside the water is marked with a brown line before changing to green later on. This means that it's not a public right of way, but some kind of concessionary path. It obviously has some history, because you first see this old sign which explains that it's free to use the path, except for the thursday of Easter week, when the toll is one penny!!


This is how beautiful this dale is, and so quiet!




I get frustrated that so many wonderful views don't look anything like as great through a viewfinder, I wonder whether sound and motion help? This is my first attempt at doing this; does it work?

This is where the water emerges from underground. It looks a little odd on the map that the water just starts apparently out of nowhere. Here's the answer: it emerges from a cave, which looks very much like something from early Lara Croft.


After emerging from the dale we found the cycle route via Moneyash and the wonderfully-named Huntmoor Butts (yes, really). The cycle path, an old railway, can be a bit flat and uninteresting in places, but has its moments:


I was surprised to see later (from the tracklogs profile, reproduced below) that this was the highest point of the walk. The climb up to the start of the cycle path was pretty gentle, and we didn't realise we were going so high.

After leaving the cycle route and finding Middleton via Green Lane, we decided that we had time and energy to take a detour that we'd kept in reserve. This took us south-west and it was on this part of the walk that the sun shone and we found the most amazing views.









Click the map below, and then each image attachment in turn to see all photographs from today's walk.



Image produced from the Ordnance Survey Get-a-map service. Map image reproduced with kind permission of Ordnance Survey and Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland.