Ashbourne to Mapleton

3 of us this week and we set off at 07:00 in the drizzling rain and parked up in the lane outside St. Oswald's Church in Ashbourne. We walked along the main road past Queen Elizabeth's School and towards the Station Hotel and found our way down to the entrance to the old railway tunnel. The tunnel leads to the start of the Tissington trail and we continued on until we got to the bridge that goes over Spend Lane. We got down from the Tissington trail onto Spend Lane and from this point the route was all on hard surface some of it single track. We passed a couple of farms going up the hill until we got to the junction that lead us to the lovely village of Mapleton. We had a look at the unusual shaped church ( Church of St Mary) before we stopped at the pub (Oakover Arms) car park and found a nice bench and table for our breakfast. After breakfast we walked past the football field and there was a match going on and it was a team from Belper playing Belper Town U16's. From there we just carried on back to the car again going through the 350M long tunnel. When we got back to the car i took another shot of the church in daylight conditions but to me it wasn't a patch on the early shot with the stained glass window lit from inside.

This weeks route around Ashbourne

St Oswald's Church Ashbourne a grade 1 listed building. The original building c1240

The old Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School

Edward V11 post box

Old railway tunnel 

Bentley Brook

Tissington trail

Old railway track shed

Coming down from the Tissington trail onto Spend Lane

Thorpe Cloud

You don't see many of these posts anymore with the foot supports on them

Geoff

Ike

Geoff & Ike

Church of St Mary a grade ll listed building from c1750

Where we had our breakfast

Belper Town U16's on the attack

Belper scoring a goal

Callow Hall

This is an ornamental peacock with a union jack in its beak

St Oswald's in daylight

 Despite the wet and damp start it was very warm and ended up being a very nice walk just over 5 miles. Passing through places we haven't been on foot before. We spoke to a couple of interesting people and Ike even bagged a bit of road kill, we passed a dead pheasant that was still warm, so its on the menu for next week.
I'm not available next Sunday so I'll be back in a couple of weeks