Post: Today we endure a passionate homily about the advisability (or other) of using private hotels for hungry cyclists, and the prices they charge. I must admit it was a very steep charge and they did well to contain their disappointment. Just don’t ask about the old lady selling picture postcards and the extra charge of one penny (1d) to see more caves ! I have to say that it was a long and strenuous day, with lots and lots of hills to climb.
Sunday, May 3 Dovedale
“Oh, my beloved nymph! fair Dove,
Princess of rivers…..
How many poets and people of literary fame have enlarged on the wonders of Dovedale? How many cyclists have urged us to visit this beauty spot, and how often have we made a vow that on the morrow, Dovedale would be seen? For two years we have been going, yet only today have we got there, and realised what we have missed. I had acquainted Tom with news of my new lightweight, and left him to fix a run up, making the stipulation that we should have an early start. To my delight, he suggested (by post) Dovedale, meet Kingsway End 7.30am – and so it was fixed.
I was up at 4.30am, creeping downstairs like a robber – I know the treads on the stairs that squeak from experience! There is an art in preparing breakfast, having a wash, and eating the meal so quietly as not to awaken light sleepers, and, though in ordinary circumstances I am a very clumsy mortal, when anything like this is on the programme, I become as silent as a mouse. At 5.40am I was out, no one being any the wiser. It was daylight, but cold and bleak, and I started at a good pace to get warm. I took the lane route to Walkden, where I had to meet a clubmate, who had promised to accompany us. He came, but told me that something had cropped up which prevented him from carrying on with us, and so, after a short chat, he turned back and I carried on alone. Keeping a steady pace – rather too fast for a start – I crossed Barton Bridge, and covered the suburban miles to Didsbury, and the meeting place, just as Tom came up. He examined the machine, tried it, and gave the opinion that it is an ideal mount for our purpose, then we started.
We faced the breeze, as we passed through Cheadle and Edgeley to Stockport, then faced the four miles of ‘killing’ setts until Hazel Grove was reached, where starts the steady grind up to Disley. I changed over to 59” in anticipation of the climb, but before I had gone too far, I knew that something had gone wrong with me – I could not get into my stride, the road seeming to drag painfully. Of course, it was my own fault, for yesterday I had been climbing every hill, and speeding along too quickly for comfort on the morrow. Because it takes more than a week to regain form after lying dormant for five weeks, it will be some time before I can regain my form and position – besides which I had only had four hours sleep last night, all contributing to my lethargy. From Disley we had a level, easy run, with excellent Peakland views on the left to Whale Bridge, where again the climbing started. Tom, too, was in a poor mood. Once we stopped for a snack, sitting on a stone with a tantalising view of green Goyt Dale before us, and the high-ridged, brown moors toning the effect.
The drag up through Fernilee would be nothing interesting were it not for the valley on our right, a valley likened by Tom to the Trossachs in Scotland. At Rake End starts the two mile horse-shoe round the edge of a deep valley, and for a change, we decided to join the old road, which cuts straight across. We did not find the descent very steep, but the resultant ascent up the grass-grown road was stiff and, of course, unrideable. At the summit, 1,401 ft, we got a good view of the moorlands surrounding Buxton, and of creeping white ribbons leading over them, with an excellent idea of the situation of the Queen of the Peak. Down we swooped into residential quarters of Buxton, then to the Spa’s shopping centre, out of which we moved as quickly as possible – we have no use for fashion.
The Ashbourne road very soon had us out of the saddle, climbing to Harpurhill, and dropping us down, only to climb again. The scenery consisted of bleak green moors, quarries galore, which stand out on the hill summit, and faint traces of the limestone dales. We were clearly out of form, the scenery was barely standard, and we had got into the seat of the hill-making industry, besides which a growing wind persistently tried to push us back. At the five cross-roads we came to Hindlow, a cold looking place, although the day was warm enough. Up we went again, then a very short down, and up again, each up meaning a walk of at least half a mile, and when we came to a level (these were very few and far between), the wind made it hard work. The first nine miles took one and a half hours, from Buxton, and we could see that we were rapidly losing ground.
Hurdlow, then Parsley Hay, and things got a little easier, the ‘downs’ being longer and the ‘ups’ shorter. At Newhaven Inn, eleven miles beyond Buxton, the scenery improved, and the next seven miles via Alsop en le Dale to Fenny Bentley saw us ‘quids in’, with a general downward tendency, and superior wood and valley scenery, until, two miles from Ashbourne, we reached Tissington, a beautiful little place, and turned right for Thorpe, at the entrance to Dovedale. We found nothing here except a motor club that made the dust fly and us curse them, but as lunch was due, we wandered away down a bylane. A notice, ‘Luncheons, Teas’ attracted us into what seemed a farmyard, and Tom ordered a Fruit dinner. We were invited to a lounge room and then had a stroll down the lawn. It was a first class, private hotel. After ages of waiting we were ushered into a dining room, where a dinner of potatoes and leathery meat was waiting for us. It was not what we had ordered, but we could scarcely say no, so we tucked into it, and cleaned it up. The next course was some sickly looking pudding, which we also removed, then waited for the next. It never came, and after half an hour of waiting, we asked for the bill. Three shillings each! For a bit of horseflesh and a mashed potato with signs of pudding about, we were charged six shillings! we paid up, glad that we had not had a full dinner. In future the ‘private family hotel’ will be given a very wide berth. I knew what would now happen, from experience, with a hot meal on board, we should go worse as far as cycling was concerned, and later events proved that it was only too true. But now for Dovedale.
Returning to Thorpe, we turned left by the ‘Dog and Partridge’, dipping suddenly downhill past the entrance to the ‘Peveril of the Peak’ hotel, and across the Dove to Thorpe Cloud, a village, and a hill guarding the entrance to Dovedale. Up again, then a rough, steep pitch brought us by the banks of the river again, and led us into the limestone gorge. A little farther on the road ended suddenly, where a crowd of motors was drawn up, and the hillside was thickly peopled. The real road lay across the river, and at first we feared that we should have to retrace our steps for half a mile, but Tom discovered some stepping stones, and hoisting the bikes on to our shoulders, we crossed quite easily, to the accompaniment of stares from the crowd. There, the real glories of this valley commenced, and there lay the most wonderful three and a half miles in the world.
From Thorpe Cloud to Dove Holes, the scenery is as though carried out by a giant artist from a fairy design. Everything is on so magnificent a scale, yet so exquisitely beautiful in all its detail. Trees, bushes, undergrowth, elfin dells and goblin rocks are everywhere; the path along which we walked and scrambled with the bikes, was at first on fairly open ground, though rocky and uneven, but across the river the hills were a mass of foliage, of every conceivable shade of green, even now in early Spring, when nature’s awakening is only just beginning. On the Derbyshire side the limestone had weathered into rugged cliffs and fantastic pinnacles, and a little farther on we crossed Sharplow Dale. Near here we started to spend money like water, paying 1d for the privilege of visiting the two Reynard caves, the ‘Hill’ and the ‘Kitchen’. We scrambled up a rocky slope, to the high, bare cliff and, above, the natural arch in a great rib of rock that marks the opening to the two caves.
From a precarious perch over the arch, we got a fine view of the dale. Returning to our machines, we were persuaded into buying some picture postcards, and were shown one which the old lady in charge of the stall said she wouldn’t sell. It was of the ‘Hill’ cave with Reynard inside, an effect which is caused by the shadow from the rocks, and which only appears at rare intervals. That, I believe, is how the caves got their name. Undoubtedly, if we had paid a price high enough, we could have obtained that print, for probably there were more for others! Tissington Spires, an array of needle-like pinnacles, could be seen from below the caves, and across the water, half hidden by trees, we could see the limestone spires of Dovedale Church. This of course is not a church, but just a name given such as abound in Dovedale, to the masses of limestone, and which bear a fanciful semblance to the buildings so named. A little farther on, we came to the Straits, where the river narrows between its tree-clad banks, and where we could only just scramble along the path.
On the far side of the Straits, we passed a little wood to where the cliff comes down to the river, and where the ‘Lions Head’, a rock which has weathered to a remarkably close resemblance to the head of a lion, juts out. Here we were at Pickering Tor, a great round bastion of limestone with five distinct points, the Lion’s rock being on the right, and a huge tor, with a cave at its base, being on the left. There also, we saw Ilam rock standing up like a needle out of a deep pool in the Dove. There was no doubt that that the scenery was hypnotising us. We could have scrambled and climbed along this wondrous dale for hours, but we remembered the time, 3.30pm, and the sixty odd miles before us, so with great resoluteness, we tramped, scrambled and carried the bikes onwards. Passing the big hill with its serrated and weather-worn outlines called the ‘Nabs’, we came to those two natural arched recesses in the rocky hillside called the Dove Holes. The larger arch has a span of over 50 feet and rises to a height of over 30 feet, but the other is not so majestic. From here, the dale becomes barren, and a very rough passage of half a mile took us to Milldale, a hamlet, where we gained the Alstonfield road. An easy climb through a defile to Lode Mill followed – then the road jumped up in front, and very soon we were tramping. Half a mile to Alstonfield, and a quarter mile beyond that, was walked, then down into the dumps, and up again. The hot dinner started to tell on us now, making us sleepy and knocking our pace down to a mere crawl. The road did the rest.
For the next three miles to Hulme End, we did quite a lot of ‘shanks’, but so far the scenery was good, and gave us some wild views, but from Hulme End, it went ‘flat’, but hillier! Anyway, the milestones were knocking the figures down. Leek was our objective, the mileage being 8.5, then 7.5, and then Warslow. A long descent, now, with the road before us curling up the hillside, to creep over a ridge. A fine wind was behind, but as soon as we started to climb, we came off, and then tramped uphill for 1.5 miles, cursing that hot dinner. The next milestone indicated ‘Leek, 8.5 miles’; then it dawned on us that we had taken the wrong road. A perusal of the map showed us that we were making two sides of a huge triangle, but we decided that we would carry on – it was too late to go back. Then, as we saw the road that we should have been on, we were not altogether sorry. Westwards a huge ridge bounded the view, and over the ridge we could see the road twisting, for all the world like a piece of string.
Another sharp rush down took us to Onecote, then up again walking another mile to the summit, from where we saw the road winding over another ridge. Again down and up, with again a view of the string-like road going ‘over the top’. We knew that before long we should have to branch off, but all we could see were roads that dragged over the hills – and the time was 5.15pm. Usually, the hillier the road the better, for the scenery and the views lie on the hard, high roads, but this time, we had struck a blank, and the dinner was doing its worst. Reaching the valley, we came to our branch, which proved to be a good main road, level, and with the wind dead behind us we made some amends. Another climb brought us above Leek, then dropping down into the cobbled streets, we soon left the ‘Capital of the Moorlands’ behind. The road, after running level for some miles, climbed, until we stood above Rudyard reservoirs, a huge sheet of water in a very pretty setting.
Rushton, the kicking off place for the Dane Valley, gave us a fine little tea place at 6.15, and thus fortified we started at 7pm to cover the last 38 miles home. As we sped along the glorious winding road to Bosley we could feel our form returning, so that long before Macclesfield was reached we were humming comfortably along and feeling better than we had done all day. From Macclesfield we joined the Stockport road for about two miles, leaving it in favour of the winding byways that took us to old-world Prestbury and Dean Row to the Wilmslow road at Handforth. We wasted no time until Kingsway End was reached, where, after a brief pow-wow, we parted at 9pm. The same road brought me home for 10.15.
I hardly know what to say about today – except that it has been worth it. We are introduced to a new district – and a very hilly one too – but Dovedale…. The home of Isaac Walton….. Of Charles Cotton…. And a worthy pilgrimage for all who seek to see the wonders of nature and the Open Road. Yes, it was worth it. 122 miles
