All 4 again this week and waking up to a fantastic sunrise was a good start. We went straight up the A6 to Curbar Village. Passing through Chatsworth Park there was a lovely herd of red deer just grazing a hundred yards from the road and they looked magnificent. It didn't take long to get up to Curbar and we parked in that layby just beside the school. We got booted up and headed up hill the first thing of note was the church tower and clock then a terrific view of Curbar Mill (AKA Colditz from the TV series). Further up the hill we passed the Pinfold. The best feature in this village in my opinion is the spring/trough installation, its unique as far as i know. A bit further up the lane there is a garden wall made up of upstanding slabs and we saw this quite a bit on our trip this morning. There were a few wells about in the village and a strange stone object that was built into a wall which had a hole in the centre and iron eye bolts either side of the hole. No one seams to know what this is for. There are some lovely cottages in the village all neat and tidy with beautiful coloured stone. We found a bench by the roadside and had our breakfast then set off to find the Cundy Graves, The Cundy family died of the plague in 1632 this is 30 years before the Plague village of Eyam was hit. Each of the grave slabs have their initials carved into them. We then passed a strange looking building with a conical roof built around 1780, again no one knows for sure what this was for. Its been described a s a lock up for prisoners during the civil war or for local miners en route to the Derby courts.
From there the track went back onto the main road for a short distance then heading uphill (again) we went over the fields towards Curbar Gap and the main road again, this time looking for some large stones by the roadside with biblical carved words on them. The carvings were done in the 19th C by one Edwin Gregory who was the mole catcher for the Duke of Devonshire.
From there we wound our way back down to the car via the road and a footpath past some great shaped tree's.
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| This weeks route |
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| Sunrise from my back garden |
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| Calver Mill |
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| Curbar Pinfold |
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| Well and trough in the middle of Curbar |
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| Interesting stone wall |
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| Little wells everywhere |
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| Strange stone object in the wall |
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| The Cundy Graves |
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| Fab tree house |
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| Curbar Lock up |
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| Ike |
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| Weather station with Curbar Edge in the background |
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| Geoff, Rob and Ike |
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| Smoke signals? |
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| Curbar Edge |
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| Rob |
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| Rob, Geoff, Ike and me |
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| An old stone trough |
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| Carved stone on the roadside close to Curbar Gab |
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| Rob and Ike |
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| Geoff |
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| Another view of Calver Mill |
A lovely walk in cracking sunshine seeing a lot of things we've never seen before. Only a short walk just under 3 miles but again a climb of over 550 feet up then down again. We'll be needing to link ourselves with ropes next lol.
see you next week
