Sheldon and Little Shacklow Woods Mine

Back to full strength today with 4 of us and it was straight up the A6 to Sheldon via Bakewell. Geoff's turn to drive and we got parked close to the Cock and Pullet pub about 07:40. We've been in part of this area before but never been up the steps back to Sheldon. These steps in Great Shacklow /woods ascend 330 feet in a very short distance and boy could i feel it when i got to the top.
The walk down through  Little Shacklow woods was brilliant, a deep heavily wooded ravine where a lot of the uprooted tree's are covered in bright green mosses. We passed by a cave and then the entrance to the Black Marble Mine before getting down to the river Wye. We walked alongside the river until we came to the Ashford Bobbin Mill where we had our breakfast. This mill has 3 water wheels, 2 on the main building and 1 in a small building just a few yards away. After breakfast we continued along the track to Great Shacklow /woods then we came to the steps, bloody hundreds of them and some quite steep. We were all knackered when we go to the top and had a rest talking to a chap with 3 dogs. From there it was a nice walk up and down again back to the car in the village,

This weeks route around Sheldon

 

Rob & Ike booting up

Sheep & chickens

Mud everywhere

Rob & Ike

Geoff

The greens in the woods were very bright

Entrance to the mine

The mine with Rob & Ike to give it a bit of scale

Rob

Mine entrance

Beautiful bark on one of the tree's

Looking back up through the woods

Even more mud

Geoff

The dark patch in the foreground is where the leat from the mill complex joins the river Wye

Ashford Mill complex constructed about 1870. Conflicting reports suggest it has been a bobbin mill or a bone crushing mill

Breakfast time

This small building had another water wheel inside and this was used to pump water up to the local village

The weir

This is the outlet of the Magpie Mine sough

The sough flowing into the river.

Geoff taking a pic, the landslip you can see to the right of Geoff was caused when the water pressure build up from the Magpie Mine sough got so great it just burst through the side of the hill (around 1960)

Fabulous looking fungi

 

The start of the steps

You can just see the A6 below in the valley

Bumped into this chap and his dogs

Just love these green lanes

Geoff washing his boots

Sheldon Church

The Cock and Pullet

A cracking walk but in parts a bit gruelling especially up the Shacklow Woods steps.Under 3 miles but a climb of 330 feet in a relative short distance was a bit of a killer.

See you next week.