Walk 10 - Parsley Hay to Friden

Today's walk is the last in this series. Thank you to everyone who has donated to Lymphoma Action. At the time of writing, these walks (and one cycle ride) have raised a brilliant £275. If you'd still like to donate you can do - simply follow this link. When I set out from home it looked as if the weather was going to be reasonable. By the time I'd driven to Ashbourne, there were a few spots of rain. By the time I'd left Ashbourne, the heavens had opened. Fortunately by the time I reached Parsley Hay the rain had stopped, even if the skies looked threatening.

I dithered over which way to walk. In the end, the promise of a tunnel sent me South towards Friden. I do love a good tunnel, and the one a few hundred metres from Parsley Hay is lovely. It's not as long as the tunnels on the Monsal Trail, but it's beautifully engineered.

So beautiful that the engineer even wanted to be associated with it forever - there's a plaque in the stonework over the tunnel celebrating his achievement.

It's easy to get carried away by the beauty of the Peak District. There was a lovely moss-covered dry stone wall on the route, the bright green contrasting with the leaves slowly gaining their autumn colours.

But it was, and remains a working landscape. Just before the former goods yard at Friden, a farmer's cows waited to be milked.

Less than 50 metres further on you can hear and smell specialist bricks being made. They have been produced on this site for over 130 years. There's a set of interesting murals and information boards on the walls of the factory, erected in 2001 by retired employees.

The landscape around here shows signs of human habitation for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Look at the map below and you'll see alongside my route the remains of a Roman Road, a stone circle and many ancient burial grounds.

I had intended to walk a little further towards Minniglow, but I was still suffering the after-effects of a double flu and covid vaccination. I ate my emergency rations on the picnic table in the car park and headed back to Parsley Hay for a bacon roll instead. Just after returning through the tunnel outside Parsley Hay, I was nearly run down by a group of elderly cyclists in high viz jackets riding two or three abreast along a narrow part of the trail. They claimed not to have seen me. They were too busy talking to each other to notice that I'd had to jump out of their way into a hedge at the last moment. As they rode off one of the ladies suggested that I needed to be more careful in future. Grrrr. Of all of the walks I've done, this was the closest I came to injury, so I'm extremely grateful that I kept my 100% accident-free record! Today I covered 9.27km, 11,871 steps, in 2hours, 20 minutes and 47 seconds. In total, over the ten walks (really 9 walks and 1 bike ride), I covered 142.85km, 100.99km walking, 41.86km cycling.