Dropping down from the village of Monyash, following the road towards Bakewell, the footpath is on your right. There is a welcome toilet block, partly paid for by Severn Trent Water. This isn’t meant to be a guide to the amenities of Lathkilldale, and I don’t mean to dwell on the mundane, but for many groups of walkers, and visiting school children, this was something that transformed their experience of the walk. City children don’t go behind bushes, especially with their class mates nearby, and with the number of walkers enjoying the Dale, the bushes would soon be unable to cope.
There’s a dew pond on your left. These ponds, lined with clay and then paved with small stones, are a feature of the limestone landscape. English Nature and Peak Park restored many of them in the late 90s. At this point you walk across fields, with perhaps a few cows in the distance. The way is level and dry, and there’s no sign of the river. There are low limestone bluffs to your right, and a scramble up a footpath on your left would bring you to the now deserted Ricklow Quarry. Crinoid limestone from this quarry was a prized building material all over the country. The limestone polishes into decorative ‘grey marble’ full of Derbyshire screws, the tiny fossilised crinoid sea creatures, a little like sea anemones, that make up the rock. Ricklow was a thriving quarry, with piles of waste stone thrown down into the dale at one point, where the old trackway for transporting the stone terminated. I was once asked to play the role of a Victorian quarryman’s wife for a living history day in the dale, organised by English Nature. It was the first hot day of that summer, a Saturday in early May. I dressed in a blouse and long skirt, with boots. I put my hair in a bun, and took a clay pipe, bought in a charity shop. I had an old wicker basket with a glass bottle of water, and some bread wrapped in a white cotton napkin. Further down the dale I knew there was a Stone Age hunter gatherer and a medieval monk. I spoke to anyone passing by about my life and my quarryman husband. Some people got it, and others obviously thought my pipe contained exotic substances. There had been a time when a small stand of cannabis plants had been discovered in a secluded part of the dale, but this was not an aspect of its history I was there to share. It was my first excursion into storytelling and I loved it.
Dropping down from the village of Monyash, following the road towards Bakewell, the footpath is on your right. There is a welcome toilet block, partly paid for by Severn Trent Water. This isn’t meant to be a guide to the amenities of Lathkilldale, and I don’t mean to dwell on the mundane, but for many groups of walkers, and visiting school children, this was something that transformed their experience of the walk. City children don’t go behind bushes, especially with their class mates nearby, and with the number of walkers enjoying the Dale, the bushes would soon be unable to cope.
There’s a dew pond on your left. These ponds, lined with clay and then paved with small stones, are a feature of the limestone landscape. English Nature and Peak Park restored many of them in the late 90s. At this point you walk across fields, with perhaps a few cows in the distance. The way is level and dry, and there’s no sign of the river. There are low limestone bluffs to your right, and a scramble up a footpath on your left would bring you to the now deserted Ricklow Quarry. Crinoid limestone from this quarry was a prized building material all over the country. The limestone polishes into decorative ‘grey marble’ full of Derbyshire screws, the tiny fossilised crinoid sea creatures, a little like sea anemones, that make up the rock. Ricklow was a thriving quarry, with piles of waste stone thrown down into the dale at one point, where the old trackway for transporting the stone terminated. I was once asked to play the role of a Victorian quarryman’s wife for a living history day in the dale, organised by English Nature. It was the first hot day of that summer, a Saturday in early May. I dressed in a blouse and long skirt, with boots. I put my hair in a bun, and took a clay pipe, bought in a charity shop. I had an old wicker basket with a glass bottle of water, and some bread wrapped in a white cotton napkin. Further down the dale I knew there was a Stone Age hunter gatherer and a medieval monk. I spoke to anyone passing by about my life and my quarryman husband. Some people got it, and others obviously thought my pipe contained exotic substances. There had been a time when a small stand of cannabis plants had been discovered in a secluded part of the dale, but this was not an aspect of its history I was there to share. It was my first excursion into storytelling and I loved it.
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