Wednesday 1 December 2021
Lea Gardens
7.4 miles Leader: David d.
Weather, Rain showers and sunshine 8°c.
No. on walk 19
Pictures by John H-T
Light rain showers before the off determined that most of us would don our waterproof clothing, turned out a wise choice as we had several small light showers throughout the walk, with intervals of quite splendid sunshine as witnessed by James’s great pictures below.
We set off up Long Lane, passing on our left, a herd of Red Deer in a field, quite undisturbed by our presence, the dominate stag with a very good set of antlers. Just after this we veered right to walk down the ‘Cliff Path’ into Holloway, no sooner our feet touched the main street, we turned to climb steeply, along a narrow single-track road to Upper Holloway. After walking a narrow slippery path, we entered several fields, making our way to Wakebridge Farm, crossing over the Leashaw Road to walk through Woodhay Baulk Farm and into the fields beyond. A good grassy downhill slope took us to the footbridge at the beginning of the quarry complex. Here we stopped by a babbling brook for our morning break.
We then continued on, around, through and into a series of disused quarries, shown on the map as Dukes Quarries. Part of this journey took us down to near the very edge of Cromford Canal, to a point mapped as Simms Wharf. We were not quite ready for the canal walk just yet, instead we turned uphill to re-cross the Robin Hood Road, winding our way, ever upwards, until we were able to look down into the quarry, we had just walked through. We now passed by the allotments of Whatstandwell village, gaining the road to drop steeply down to the school and over the road to a path leading us to Whatstandwell rail station. Here joining the Cromford Canal path, following this for the next two miles, which included passing through the tunnel at Gregory’s Dam, eventually arriving at the picnic tables at High Peak Junction for our lunch break.
After lunch we crossed over the canal, making our way towards Lea Bridge Road, turning off it to walk up into Lea Wood and onward to Lea Hurst and eventually into the centre of Holloway village. We walked Church Street as far as the ‘closed’ toilets, then to make or way, on a serpentine path, through the recently restored hillside memorial gardens. We paused to view the wonderful living tree carving, of a near life size World War One soldier. We continued to the very top of the gardens, to the War Memorial on Long Lane, which we had passed near the start of our walk. After a few hundred yards of downhill walking, we were back at our cars, just after two o’clock. When I pre-walked this route, the sun was shining and all was clear and bright, with fantastic views from the many vantage points we climbed. Sadly today we were unable to see these views, keeping our heads down, watching and treading carefully over many slippery surfaces, made worse by fallen leaves and rain. You will see that James captured, some lovely sunny shots which I seemed to have missed.
