Out & About: Great Longstone and the Monsal Trail

Sunday, 10 May 2015

Great Longstone and the Monsal Trail

Just 3 of us this week and we hadn't a clue where we were going, so we headed north up the A6 and stopped at Bakewell to look at the map and decided Great Longstone was worth a visit. We parked just opposite the green with the market cross and got booted up. We wandered down the village street and turned right onto a footpath just past the White Lion pub. Through past some houses and the playing fields then down to the Monsal Trail. Walking along the Monsal trail some sections were just full of rabbits, even got to a few feet of some of them, clearly used to people on the trail. We continued until we got to the Headstone Tunnel then onto the viaduct where we had our breakfast.

Its a steep climb from the Monsal Viaduct up to the Monsal Head Hotel where we stopped for a bit to recover and take some pics. This must be one of the most recognised places in Derbyshire.
We wandered down through Little Longstone across the fields and back to the car. Normally that would have been it and back home but i spotted a couple of really old tractors at the top of the village going onto a narrow road. Then more tractors came through the village and followed suit. We decided to follow and see what it was all about. We ended up at Castlegate Farm where there must have been every tractor from the Derbyshire Peaks assembled, old and new. We had a good look around and found out it was the annual Castlegate Tractor Run. We decided to leave before they set off because the route out would be blocked with tractors for about an hour.