Chatsworth

  

CHATSWORTH

 

August 25, 2021

 

 

BASLOW, PARK SIDE, DOBB EDGE, STAND WOOD, SOWTER STONE, RING POND, HILLTOP FARM, DEVONSHIRE ARMS AT BEELEY, DERWENT BRIDGE, RYE CROFT , NEW PIECE WOOD, SURPRISE VIEW, EDENSOR, CHATSWORTH HOUSE, QUEEN MARY’S BOWER, DERWENT VALLEY WAY, ROBIN HOOD AT BASLOW

 

Distance: 11 miles ​Ascent/descent: 1,520 ft

 

Difiiculty: Easy

 

Weather: Bright and dry, sun later. Warm.

 

Walkers: Peter Beal, Andy Blease, Mark Gibby, Jock Rooney, Dean Taylor with Tommy, Dave Willetts

 

Apologies: Alan Hart (accompanying friend to hospital), Tom Cunliffe (‘domestic stuff’), Alastair Cairns (unspecified), Hughie Hardiman (Menorca), Chris Owen (walking with wife), George Dearsley (Turkey), John Jones (Weston-super-Mare)

 

Leader: Rooney​​Diarist: Beal

 

Starting point: Baslow Church

 

Starting time: 10am​Finishing time: 3.23pm

 

 

 

Much of today’s walk was in the 1,000-acre Chatsworth Park estate and magnificent views, stunning scenery and good weather made for an excellent outing with tons of local history thrown in.

 

Summer hols and domestic commitments reduced our happy band to half a dozen Wanderers as we gathered in the busy village of Baslow where parking proved tricky. But the walking route chosen by Jock kept us away from most of the staycation trippers lured to the attractions of historic Chatsworth House.

 

We met in front of St Anne’s Church in the middle of the village and from here turned right towards the busy roundabout marking the junction of the Bakewell and Chesterfield main roads. We turned left here towards Chesterfield and very soon, after the entrance to a caravan park and a pelican crossing took a footpath at a gap in the wall on the right, down a small flight of stone steps.

 

We followed the path over a footbridge with two kissing gates and at another kissing gate in front of a luxury rented cottage, turned right. This brought us to the unusual Cannon Kissing Gate, an eight-foot high revolving gate inspired by Mrs Jill Cannon and opened by her and the Duke of Devonshire in 1999, to make access to Chatsworth Park easier for wheelchair users.

 

We were now in the rolling parkland of the estate and headed uphill in the direction of woods. We entered the woodland by climbing a flight of stone steps (26 minutes) and followed a steepish path through the trees to emerge on a broad track (33 min).

 

At a crossroads we carried straight on to reach the impressive four-storey Hunting Tower, with surrounding cannons,  which dates from the 1580s and is one of only two Elizabethan structures surviving in the park. It was used to observe the movements of the park’s deer herds before hunting and also for banquets. A walker who arrived told us he had counted 148 steps bringing him up from Chatsworth House in the valley more than 300 feet below us.

 

Chatsworth House has been the home of the Cavendish family, later the Dukedom of Devonshire, for almost 500 years. The original house was built by the formidable Bess of Hardwick, the third wife of William Cavendish and one of the country’s richest women. It was rebuilt by the first Duke of Devonshire in the late 17th century.

 

We resumed along the track and soon reached another landmark, the Sowter Stone waterfall, in a clearing in the trees with views of the House below (51 min). A stone-built mini-reservoir above the fall, which feeds the ornamental cascades in the House grounds below, struck our canine friend Tommy (aka The World’s Largest Dog)  as the ideal spot for a bit of bathing.

 

We resumed by following a short and scenic diversion around the Ring Pond, the source of water for the waterfall and one of four reservoirs built on a shelf in Stand Wood. The largest, the Emperor Lake, provides water to power the Emperor Fountain near the House.

Named after the Russian Czar Nicholas when it was hoped he would visit in 1844 it has been reported to reach heights of 300 feet, powered by the pressure of water dropping nearly 400 feet through an iron pipe from the lake above. The Czar never arrived.

 

We arrived back at Sowter Stone (73 min) and took the track again, which soon became metalled. After a zig-zag and just before reaching Park Farm, we climbed a stile in the stone boundary wall to leave Stand Wood (80 min).

 

We took a track through the thick bracken ahead and soon, at a clearing where a footpath led off to the right, we observed a belated pie-time (84 min).

 

We took this footpath steeply downhill, through thick bracken at times head high, to reach a gate leading in to a field (95 min). A stile brought us to a track where we turned left to reach Beeley Hilltop Farm. We went through the messy farm yard and through a gate to a track leading along the side of a field. 

 

We bore right along a path, through fields and over stiles downhill with the village of Beeley seen ahead and just below us. We reached the Devonshire Arms in the village (118 min)  and enjoyed pints on an outside terrace. Our leader had to be revived here after discovering he was charged £4-85 for Timothy Taylor’s Landlord.

 

Resuming we had a short walk on a narrow pavement up the busy road towards Baslow before taking the first path on the left, opposite the church,  through fields. We reached the main road again and turned left across a bridge over the River Derwent and almost immediately left again before taking a path rising through trees on our right. This soon emerged at a car park near a garden centre where we turned left along a minor road (141 min), then swinging right to join a wide, gravelled bridleway, which we followed for around a mile.

 

The track took a zig-zag uphill (162 min) to pass Rye Croft Cottages and narrowed to reach a gate (166 min). We turned right here, signed Chatsworth, and went through a gate in to a field. We headed for a band of trees ahead of us on the crest of the hill. A gate here took us in to a walled track with the private woodland on either side and descended to soon reach another gate leading us back in to the Chatsworth estate (177 min).

 

This was the spot known locally as Surprise View – providing us with a splendid sweeping panorama looking over the valley with the House in its centre and the Hunting Tower we had visited earlier high in the trees above it. We called a brief lunch stop here near an information board at the viewpoint telling us most of the landscaping over the park had been commissioned by the 4th Duke, using the skills of Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown.

 

We descended the gentle sloping parkland, now with the distinctive spire of St Peter’s Church in the village of Edensor (pronounced Ensor) rising above the trees ahead of us. We came to a gate and took a flight of steps down alongside the church to emerge in the picture-postcard village, once the home of estate workers but now considerably more upmarket (192 min).

 

Now surrounded (briefly) by more and more day trippers we crossed the main road, through gates and a cattle grid and took a wide track on the right towards the House. We crossed the Derwent again (208 min) and bore left along a good track, the Derwent Valley Way, following the line of the river.

 

On our right we passed the park’s other remaining Elizabethan feature, Queen Mary’s Bower, a favourite spot of Mary, Queen of Scots, when she was ‘entertained’ at the House from 1573 – 82.

 

A walk of just over a mile, passing a picturesque cricket ground on the left, brought us back to the park boundary at the Cannon Kissing Gate (228 min), where we retraced our steps back in to Baslow (241 min).

 

Leader and diarist repaired to the Robin Hood pub for pints of more modestly-priced (compared to the Devonshire) Moonshine (£3-85) and John Smith’s (£3-75).

 

Next week’s walk, again led by Jock, will start in Ashford-in-the-Water at 10am, calling en route at the Pack Horse in Little Longstone around 12.30pm. There is roadside parking opposite the church in the village or alternatively at a small car park at the public toilets.

 

Happy wandering!

 

 

 

 

 

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