A bit of tight scheduling today; I needed to catch four buses in total, but everything on public transport went according to plan. I got off the first bus at Bakewell and had forty five minutes to wait for the next one and so this gave me the opportunity to take some early morning photographs when the town was very quiet with few people around. It was still quite murky and that's why many of the images are in black and white.
I arrived at Taddington and headed straight for the church to take some pictures but the light was awful and so I didn't bother; I managed to get a couple of photographs of the floral displays at one of the rather pretty bus shelters in the village though.
The footpath I took to leave the village was very narrow, right next to a [fortunately] well-trimmed leylandii hedge before I climbed up towards the small covered reservoir and trig point at Sough Top.
As I continued walking towards Chelmorton I met a fellow walker, a local man who used to work for the water board. We chatted for about fifteen minutes about the provision of drinking water in the Peak District - I was fascinated and could have talked about this all day...but we both needed to move on. He did however, tell me what the correct pronunciation of 'Chelmorton' is though; it's Chel-Morton.'
I soon reached Chelmorton and took some photographs of the church; I was here on my previous walk last week and didn't have the time. The light was still murky though and none of the images was any good.
At times I struggled to locate the path as I walked across the fields to Sterndale Moor, a small settlement consisting of fairly modern houses built for the quarrymen at Hindlow.
A train was just arriving at the quarry which helped me to locate the next section of footpath which runs right alongside the railway for about half a mile before crossing over a bridge. I was by now in pastureland but could see quarry workings and spoilheaps whichever direction I looked.
Just before reaching this blasting shelter I was phoned by a friend for the second time today and wasn't concentrating on my navigation and turned left instead of right, and so had to plan a new route which would take me to the bus stop at Blackwell Lane End...where I finished my walk last week. I had planned to walk to Buxton, but this mistake, this lapse of concentration, wasn't a disaster; it still ended up being an interesting walk with plenty of new areas to explore.
The path I had taken soon gave me my closest view yet of Parkhouse Hill and Chrome Hill, two distinctive ridges which I want to walk along one day. Over in the other direction I could see right down into the active quarry with railway wagons, large tipper trucks, excavators, and crushed stone travelling along conveyor belts to be dumped in large heaps.
I had been walking along the southern edge of Hindlow Quarry for quite a while until I reached the end of the active workings. From this point my route back to the bus stop was due north mainly along farm tracks and country lanes. The sun finally came out for the final hour or so of the day - the final photograph was taken at the bus stop.
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