Day 1 - heading south
Sad to be leaving the alpine Lakes District behind. We're heading south for the pastoral rolling hills of the Peak District in Derbyshire, and hopefully more agreeable weather as we come down out of the clouds. Our ultimate destination is our BnB in Litton Mill to the south east of Manchester. Litton Mill? An historic 18th-century cotton-spinning mill on the River Wye.
If the name vaguely rings a bell, it's because Litton Mill was infamous - it relied heavily on forced child labour, especially pauper apprentices from distant city workhouses, who were subjected to brutal conditions. It was exposed by Robert Blincoe, who arrived at Litton Mill in 1803 at about age seven, and endured beatings, starvation, dangerous machinery and 14 hour days. He dictated his story to journalist John Brown in 1822 which helped fuel public outrage about child labour in factories, and is said to have inspired Dickens’ Oliver Twist.
There are a lot of little towns between Barrowford and Lancaster: Roughlee, Newchurch, Barley, Downham. Clitheroe, Waddington, Newton, Dunsop Bridge and Trough of Bowland. We drive through most of them.
Back in the early 1600s it wasn't an easy time being poor, particularly for women. Many relied on folk healing, begging, and charms to survive, and rivalries were intense. Superstition was rife, and claims of sorcery were levelled at rivals. When a passing pedlar at Pendle Hill dropped dead after an encounter with a woman, his son claimed he'd been bewitched. A Puritan magistrate investigated and rounded up 11 people, mostly women, and marched them in chains to Lancaster Castle via these towns. Known as the Pendle Witches, they were tried, all but one convicted, and hanged.
A statue of Alice Nutter, one of the witches, is immortalised in Roughlee. As an adjacent plaque reads, she was unusual amongst the accused in that she was comparatively wealthy, the widow of a yeoman farmer. There was no evidence that she was a "witch", and pleaded not guilty to the charge of murder, but was hanged along with the others in 1612.
A sombre Pauline reflects on conditions 400 years ago when poverty, superstition, religious intolerance and zealous prosecution lead to horrendous injustices.
And now for the sisters.
Pauline's read Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights in her youth, and is keen to see the Brontë sisters' home, which they lived in from 1820 to the end of their relatively short lives. We set the GPS for the Haworth Parsonage which is now museum, though it feels more like a preserved family home frozen in time.
The room where the sisters did much of their writing is immaculately restored.
Their early deaths are tragic. Mother Maria died just after arriving at Harworth, leaving father Patrick to raise six children all under 8 years old. The two eldest children died shortly thereafter. Charlotte died at age 38 from TB and pregnancy complications, Emily at age 30 of TB, and Anne at age 29, also of TB. Brother Branwell died before them at age 31 of TB worsened by alcoholism and opium addiction. Their father Patrick outlasted all his six children and died age 84. I can't imagine how it must have felt to have to bury your wife and six children. Sadly as well, the world has been deprived of more novels from these incredible sisters.
Another magnificent grandfather clock - I'm getting rather sentimental about these.
Patrick would wind it at 9pm every night as he warned his daughters not to stay up too late.
Having read Charlotte's Jane Eyre and Emily's Wuthering Heights, Pauline bought Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in the gift shop to round off her reading list.
The town of Haworth is delightful, with the only distraction being the Halloween displays set up six weeks in advance.
Lunch at Pavé.
Having sampled the cheese platter, how could we not get more to bring back to the BnB? A quote from author Avery Aames is prominently displayed: Life is great. Cheese makes it better. Works for me!
The chocolate shop has just as much attraction for Pauline.
We're running a bit late by this stage and head straight for our Monsal Cottage BnB. We're in Manchester's halo and rush hour traffic is horrendous. We arrive after dark, and take this pic the next morning. Bright and sunny!
Day 2 - a day in Derbyshire
When I think of magpies and lead, I visualise a small pellet travelling at high speed where the prognosis for the magpie is not good. That, of course, relates to nasty aggressive Australian magpies regarded as a pest species at home. Perhaps not as destructive as hedgehogs or possums, but they attack native birds, and that's a good enough reason to take them out whenever they come in range. But there's a problem - their intelligence is on a par with crows, and it's rumoured that not only can they tell if you're carrying a firearm, they can tell what calibre it is too, and stay just out of range.
By comparison, British magpies are lovely with iridescent blue‑green wings and a long, elegant tail. They're generally shy and rarely aggressive.
Which brings me to our first stop of the day - the Magpie Lead Mine. Just opposite the entrance is a scene I haven't seen for a while - a herd of cows.
It's clearly not the Waikato. Stock density is low, dry-stone walls delineate the paddocks, and there isn't an electric fence in sight. But hay making is in progress - all a marked contrast to the Lakes District where the moors and dales can only support a few sparse sheep.
Ah - the lead mine. Not far from our BnB and Bakewell. Initiated in the 18th century, it continued working until decommissioned in the 1950s.
The mine is famous for a violent dispute between rival mining groups back in 1833. Both were working the same vein from different shafts, and one group lit a fire to smoke the other out. Three men died, but the perpetrators were acquitted of murder as it couldn't be proved who lit the fire. Rumour has it that the victim's wives put a curse on the mine and it subsequently struggled with flooding, disputes and low ore prices until it eventually closed down.
It's a dramatic landscape though.
So why the Magpie Mine? According to the historical record, the mine’s name “likely originates from the magpie’s association with shiny objects, a fitting moniker for a mine that yielded this valuable metal".
We pop back to the BnB to hang out washing, have lunch, then note the Yaris needs a top-up. Not just petrol, the TPMS advises the front right tyre is low so I ease into the air pump space. Hmm - air's not flowing. Is the pump broken? Then I read the instructions. Payment is required! For the first time in my life I've had to pay for air. Ok it was only £1.50 but it didn't put me in a particularly good mood.
It was only 4km, but with a 200m elevation gain it gave us a decent workout. The trail was rough in places too. Here we're crossing an old road that's slipped down the hill.
It used to be the A625, but it was built right across the weak shale landslide zone. After multiple slides and repairs the last straw was the 1974 failure and the road was abandoned. Engineers accepted the obvious: you can’t build a stable road on a moving mountain.
We're on our way to the Derwent Dam, but there's a tantalisingly labelled Snake Pass road just to the north. We've done Hardknott - why not knock off another tricky one? It must twist and turn like a snake with a name like that. What an anti-climax! It was less difficult than cruising over the Kaimais on SH29. And the name? It comes from the Snake Inn, a coaching inn built in the early 19th century by the Duke of Devonshire. The inn’s sign featured a serpent - the emblem of the Cavendish family - and travellers began referring to the road as “Snake Pass”.
But it got us to Derwent Dam, where the engineer creating the Midland's water supply had a sense of humour. He rather liked Gothic towers.
Two of them.
Please note that washing, bathing and being a nuisance are not allowed.
But it's on the upside of the dam where the action happened. In WW2 the British needed to take out the German dams in the Ruhr, but they were heavily protected. Enter the bouncing bomb - a huge spinning cylinder that skipped across water like a skimming stone, evaded torpedo nets, struck a dam wall, sank, and detonated underwater to breach the dam.
Note how low the water level is. A long dry summer has left both the Derwent and nearby Ladybower Reservoirs exceptionally low. The remains of the Derwent and Ashopton villages flooded when the dams were built have now reappeared. They normally sit metres underwater.
Fortunately we're back at Monsal Cottage before nightfall. Tomorrow we're heading to Brewood, near Wolverhampton. What on earth is the attraction in the middle of the industrial Midlands? Can't you think of somewhere more scenic to go? All will be revealed.
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