David and Jacinta's Walks- 2025

Hartington and Three Dales- with Ann and Julian We had reconnoitred a walk  the previous week that we thought would be nice to do with Ann and Julian to mark Ann's birthday and scoped out the Hartington Farm Shop and Café as somewhere nice to have breakfast before the walk. Ann and Jacinta in Wolfscote Dale The breakfast must have been good, as we completed the walk in 2½ hours (including a break for tea from flasks) whereas on our original walk we'd taken 3½- but that had included a lunch break. It was a great walk and time flew with enjoyable conversation between friends. We were even treated to tea and cake at the farm shop at the end of the walk- a lovely day out. 6.1 miles with 170m ascent.

Hartington and Three Dales We decided that we'd like to south for a change of scenery, and we knew that Hartington had at least one nice café (which we'd visited in October 2024). The OS map showed some excellent potential and we weren't disappointed. The walk took us south below the "bump" of Pennilow, a distinct promontory, into Morson Wood and into Beresford Dale below the grounds of Beresford House. After a kilometre or so, Beresford Dale turned into Wolfscote Dale with impressively hight walls- true limestone country. Into Wolfscote Dale The path suggested that this was popular walking country but we met only a few other walkers, including a gentleman with two aging boarder collies- we chatted with him for a while; it turned out that he has an apartment in Chamonix. We should have asked him if he rented it out! We passed quite a few nonchalant sheep making the most of the slopes. They're probably used to lots of visitors at the weekends and in the summer....