Two

Walk Two - "Winster and Birchover" - 4 miles (2 hours). On an untypically hot March afternoon, I undertook this walk with my friend Mick. We drove south to the village of Winster - west of Matlock and south of Chatsworth. My oh my - what a delightful village Winster is with a mixture of limestone and gritstone cottages - some of which date back to the sixteenth century. In its heyday, it must have been an important regional centre - when people's lives were lived in small circles and to get anywhere you travelled by horse and cart. There was also a lot of lead mining thereabouts.

Soon after parking, we were mooching around and I snapped a couple of pictures. A lady of mature years rushed out of the nearby village shop. I thought she was going to complain about me taking pictures but she wanted to know if we'd like to go in the village museum above the ancient Market House. This we did and after reading about Winster's history, we spotted several small tortoiseshell butterflies in an upper window.

Small tortoiseshell in The Market House, Winster

Winster Village Shop

A sunny gennel in Winster

"The Miners Standard" pub, Winster

We walked up The Limestone Way then cut across to the village of Birchover where we guzzled pints of bitter shandy in "The Red Lion"  before heading back to lovely Winster. A downside of this country ramble was that the battery on my new camera packed up so I didn't snap many pictures. I won't make the same mistake again. The charged spare will always be in my camera case from now on. Silly me!