Walk Around Cromford

Today we decided to go for a country walk. The weather recently has been quite poor, so we havn't really ventured out much at the weekends. In the morning we went into Belper, as the farmers market was on, so went there got a load of shopping and then went to the walking shop to get amanda some walking boots.


After we got home and had lunch we picked a walk out of our book. The walk starts at Cromford wich is between Belper and Matlock. The walk was 5 miles and should take around 3 hours. We parked near Arkwrights mill and headed off on the walk following the instructions out of the book.

Obligtory photo of Amanda reading the map.

After about half an hour of walking we reached a point with a very steep acent. This was knackering. Not so bad for me as I go to the gym twice a week, but I don't think Amanda's feet were too keen :-)

Once we got to the top of the ascent, we reached a place called the black rock. From here we carried on along the path. The view from the top of the hill was quite good. You could see the quarry were they blast lime stone.


We was using the AA book of peak districk walks, which was ok, but we found some of the instructions are not too clear. For example, it would say to walk along a path and when it forks take the right. Ok this is fine, but the path had about 4 different forks, and it didn't say how far along to go first. Oh well, we bluffed it around ok in the end ;-)



Towards the middle of the walk you end up at an old un-used railway station / visitor centre. The have an old style train carraige, which was quite interesting to look at. To finish the walk we walked along the canal for a couple of miles back to the car park.


It was nice to get out for a walk today and blow out a few of the cobwebs that appear sitting in an office all week. I reckon we burned off quite a few calories. Which is good as we will put them all back on as we are going out for a curry and Andy and Elaine tongiht :-)