Buxton Archives - Andrea Gibbons

Another escape onto the moors as lockdown eases. Still glorious. Today was an effort to do better than our last attempt at these particular moors, walking from the station Buxton. That was a grim, cold walk and no mistake, and a closed pub at the end of it. I almost cried.

This was a beautiful sunny day, we sat on a wall eating pasties and taking in a view of the now-open Crescent Hotel (I rather fancy staying there when things open again), bought ice cream as we walked through the Pavilion Gardens. My last memory of it I was tired, hungry and bedraggled. And there were mummers. I never know what I think about them. But no mummers today.

This was lovely, a bit long to get out of Buxton maybe, but then a swift climb up hill, over an old rail line, and up where you feel on top of the world. Across the hills in sun and shadow. A brief encounter with a geezer in a tweed waistcoat, awesome. The lovely blue waters of the reservoir. The ruins of Errwood hall and a brief wish we’d arrived a little later to see the hillside of rhododendrons in full bloom. Exhausted stumble into Whaley Bridge. Home.

We started in Buxton — old spa town, regency architecture, mummers and dancers in fancy dress in a square (Mark murmured about the horror but I rather like them), lovely park suitably filled with follies and screaming children and people with money. It does have an old sacred well spilling out geothermal waters — St Anne’s.

I was thinking about going to Poole’s Caverns, following in the tracks of Romantic poets and such, but you have to walk through a chintzy gift shop to get there — you don’t even get a cliff face and a gaping dark mouth to enter. It was full of people. We fled. We are getting old crabbit maybe, but that is hardly a good way to spend an afternoon. The woods just, however, are beautiful, despite being sandwiched between Go Ape and a caravan park.

I wanted moors and wide open spaces and we found them, but really it was a bit grim. I don’t quite know why it feels so different on this edge of the Peak District. The day was grey, to be fair, but this was as good as it got really…

The sheep, as always were amusing

There were remnants of mining up here in the form of pitted ground, the earth peaty and carved away oddly by water

There was a lovely little area with three bridges and a confluence of streams, that also came with about 40 french kids and a number of other walkers so we fled that too. This tower might have, thus, been the highlight.

And this beautiful glowing in the sky, which I have never seen before

Or this moment when we thought we were close to the promised land of the pub.

Like so many of our walks, we had such high hopes but the Cat and Fiddle had been closed for years and we had to make our sad, cold, hungry way back to Buxton.