Wonders of the Peak

Buxton Museum & Art Gallery

Discovering Britain

One Ash Grange

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This is a spot to soak up a sense of history.  Semi-derelict buildings abound, many dating back to the twelfth century when this was a farm worked by monks from Roche Abbey in South Yorkshire.

Tradition has it that brothers who misbehaved were sent here to do penance. The life-size, contemporary stone statue of a Buddhist monk in the farmhouse garden is a reminder of those former days, as is the medieval ice-house (a small, adapted cave to the right) and the old run of pigsties, with their clever system of feed chutes and troughs. Ice may have been collected by the monks from the Lathkill River during the winter and used to help keep dairy produce cool and fresh.

A well would also have been a necessity here, sunk deep enough to reach the natural water table, or water may have been collected from the spring back in Cales Dale.  It is not difficult to imagine the monks carrying buckets of water, or ice, up and down the slippery stone stairs, perhaps cursing the day they were sent here.

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The Torrs Millennium Walkway

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This is the Torrs’ star tourist attraction: the Millennium Walkway. Its long sweep of shining steel takes us over one of the noisiest of the Goyt’s weirs, at a dizzying height. It’s an inspired way of linking the riverside park with the trains at New Mills Central Station and Torr Vale Mill.

Millennium Walkway © Simon Corble

The vast edifice of Torr Vale Mill, just across the river, began life as a water-powered cotton mill in the 1780s. It was converted first to steam, then to electricity and spun its last yarn in 2000.

The oldest section of the building faces us, with its typically Georgian rectangular windows. The former mill race passed through the stone arch just below it, to the right.

Torr Vale Mill © Simon Corble

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Lovers Leap

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Lover’s Leap © Trevor Harris via Geograph (CC BY SA 2.0)

This is a fine place to view the lower portion of Dovedale. Opposite, rising out of the ash woods, you can just make out the rock pinnacles known as the Twelve Apostles.

Pinnacles like these are made of harder bands of limestone that were left were behind after the erosion of the last Ice Age. Over the centuries since then, they have been further shaped into craggy towers by water gradually dissolving the rock or repeatedly freezing in cracks until the rock weakens and crumbles away.

Steps up to Lover’s Leap © Matt Fascione via Geograph (CC BY SA 2.0)

Lover’s Leap gets its name from a girl who attempted suicide from this high point, but was saved by her billowing skirts! The steps up to the high point were said to be built by Italian prisoners of war during World War Two.

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Reynard’s Cave

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Pause where you can see the natural arch of Reynard’s Cave. To find out how it formed we need to travel back to the end of the last Ice Age, around 10,000 years ago, when glacial meltwater swelled the Dove into a powerful torrent. Icy waters cut down through fissures and faults in the rock like a knife through butter. The vertical crags and pinnacles we can see from here are harder bands of limestone that the water could not cut through, but just how did these natural caves and arches form?

Reynard’s Cave © Beth via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)

 

Limestone has many joints and cracks. When acidic rainwater trickles into these joints, it dissolves and widens them into underground drainage systems, including tunnels, caves and caverns. As the river cut down through the limestone it intercepted some of these secret tunnels and caves, opening them up for the first time. Reynard’s Cave is the remnant of just such an old cavern, exposed as the Dove cut down through the limestone.

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Castles in the air

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Alport Dale in the Dark Peak has an air of remote wilderness, enhanced by the tottering towers and eroded rock faces of Alport Castles, said to be the largest
landslip in Britain.

This walk takes us to the lip of the landslip from the neighbouring Upper Derwent Valley to take in the drama of these ‘castles in the air’.

Enjoy one of the geological showplaces and scenic highlights in the Peak District
National Park, in one of its most remote and wild places. Keep your eye out for Peregrine falcon – the area has recently become a nesting site for these majestic birds.

Starting at the car park at Fairholmes Visitor Centre, in the shadow of the Derwent Dam, exit the car park and turn left to walk down the road you have just driven along. After approx 50-100m, follow the marker sign on the right and ascend a path with a stream to your left. Continue to the culverted watercourse where the path splits.

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