New Year's Day Walk - Bakewell / Ashford-in-the-Water

We left Keith and Pete getting breakfast and were defrosting my car when Niki & Mat drove down the hill.  Met them and the rest – Paul C, Peter & Christine, Scott and one other lady – in Holme Lane, Bakewell.

Had a look at a couple of the entrances to Holme Bank Chert Mine, which were steaming gently - the air escaping from the mine was positively warm - and then set off up the fields and over the hill to drop down through Cracknowl Wood onto the A6020 near Ashford.

We stopped in Ashford for a bite to eat and then set off up the hill opposite the bridge above Arrock Black Marble Mine...

The view across Ashford towards Longstone Edge.

Walking along the lane.

and along the lane to drop back into the fields.

 The view across the fields back towards Bakewell.

The view further south to the woods above Haddon Hall.

Scott spent the walk throwing stones onto every pond we came to and even slid across one of them, but the largest one that we encountered right near the end of the walk, he wisely decided was perhaps a bit dodgy.  When the top layer of ice was broken there were two other layers below it and the whole thing was extremely creaky around the edges. 

We finally dropped back into Bakewell near the church and had a look at some stone coffins propped up at the back of the building and then inspected the gravestone of White Watson (who has something to do with mining, but sadly I wasn't listening at this point, so I missed what was said), before returning to the cars.

Stone coffins propped up at the back of Bakewell church.