Friday July 4th

Blaslow, Curbar Gap and Gardom's Edge

We were off to Baslow for an afternoon/evening walk, with the hope of a nice coffee at The Café on the Green but, alas, it was closed. Never mind, though- we set off from the car park and up to Blackstone Edge. We skipped the visit to Wellington's Monument as we'd been there plenty of times, and took the path across Eaglestone Flat past The Eagle Stone.

Jacinta at The Eagle Stone

As we got closer to the Curbar Gap car park, we could see that the Citroën van coffee waggon was parked there. Happily, it was still open and each had a treat- coffee for one, a honeycomb ice cream for the other. There was the occasional spit of rain, and we thought that we'd adjust our walk, which we'd planned to go past Froggatt and back along White Edge. Instead, we went up the track that we'd often descended from the end of  White Edge. It has been substantially upgraded, with a bridge across the swamp at the bottom, and proper steps set into the upwards slope.

Nearing the south end of White Edge, Curbar Gap on the horizon

The 1:50000 OS map names the next section down to the road junction as "Swine Sty". No pigs were to be seen. Instead, an extensive herd of cows, all lying down indicating bad weather on the way (so it's said) and we bypassed them on higher ground.

Cows on Swine Sty

We crossed the roads at the junction at the tops of Blackstone and Gardom's Edges and followed Gardom's Edge to its end and the familiar rock formation (Three Men?) which we pass when we're coming up from Robin Hood. It's always good to approach a spot that we know from a new direction. From here, we went down to the road at Robin Hood and crossed into the Chatsworth Park with its refined, clean and sometimes seasoned sheep.

Well-groomed Turmeric Chatsworth sheep with their lambs

We returned to the Baslow car park, where we had our evening meal of (veggie) Chorizo Cornbread before returning home.

A walk of almost seven miles with 310m ascent.



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