Derbyshire 168 Stone Edge /an industrial chimney/heath land and heather /the flowers don't compete

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Day 131 Thursday- good news Cadw the welsh heritage site have decided to give us a helping hand. They are giving us six months extra free membership to compensate us for not being able to use the card . How nice is that? I doubt that the National Trust will follow suit. They bleat about the loss of income and they are such a big organisation . Much bigger than Cadw . Their answer to the lack of funds is not to be kind to their members but to sack thousands of staff . Not those at the top . Swimming this morning before work . The one way system seems to be working . The young in the queue though seem to congregate and talk to each other . The duty manager yells - "Shall I get my tape measure out and measure the distance between you three ?" They all laugh and sidle a bit further apart . An older lady stops me . She had not been for a while and was worried . I explained the way things worked . The screens, the need to come swim ready. Only a few lockers available . Oh she said I am not using the lockers . I am leaving my kit and bags poolside . I am not drying myself off . I have put a plastic cover on my car seats . I explained again that showers were not being encouraged and leaving kit by the pool was a health and safety nightmare before Covid . Oh no she said mine are going there . They told me I could so I will. I smiled inwardly as they told her to use a locker or go home . Precautions are being taken and most of us are keeping to them irksome as they might be .

Day 132 - Friday "After swimming how about going somewhere ?" Great says I but where . Sculpture Park open but the world and his dog will be there . Don't want crowds do we? All the places I want to go are book in advance and who knows what the weather will be like or even if we will feel like going . It was hot this morning and we needed to get off early. I left the driver contemplating whilst I swam. Considering I consider myself fit and have walked a lot swimming has proved a difficult thing to go back to. I found it impossible to swim the lengths I did prior to Covid and it will take a long time to get back to swim fitness . Despite the walking my legs ached , my arms ached and let's face it everywhere ached .

By the time I got back , sitting over coffee and a small piece of cake the driver announced " Stone Edge " . Well at least I thought what was what he had said " No don't know - where is that ?" "You know where it is - the industrial chimney you mention when we pass it " I must still have had that blank look on my face . "No cannot think". "On the road to Wales , up towards the long narrow road where we cross the main road to Matlock - where mum had her 90th birthday celebration " Realisation starts slowly to dawn . Ok let's go . It is not far . Just a few miles from home .

Parking was not easy . The lane was narrow with stone walls to either side . One tiny bit of grass verge offered us a place to park up Ziggy. The parking sensors pinged - too much vegetation was setting them off . Brambles everywhere . We knocked them carefully back and eventually got on the grass . Locked Ziggy up and set off for the walk .

Ok first things first we stop and look at the chimney . Stone Edge smelt mill is one of the best preserved examples in England of a reverberatory smelt mill. I had never realised its importance . It had retained overall layout of smelt mill, slag hearth, condensing flue and chimney, and slag-washing area. I was interested in industrial history and it made a change to stand in front of the old mill chimney and think about the noises and the smells that would have been constant on the site . Hard to believe today on such a quiet morning . Just us and the Sheep for company. The site demonstrates the development of a large smelt mill complex through the later 18th and earlier 19th centuries and was listed which is a good thing. Sadly much of the buildings had been robbed and nature had taken over with brambles everywhere and the last of the summer flowers flowering . The chimney is thought to be the earliest free standing industrial chimney in England.

We climbed through the stone gateway. Two large stone pillars either side with a gap up the middle . Breathe in - off we go . The path is narrow and seems unused . We pick our way along it . Mauve Ling growing on the path edges . The mauve heather a slightly later flower just coming into bloom . In a few weeks this part of Derbyshire will rival Scotland clothed in purple heather . We stood at the first pool . So quiet . Small Skipper butterflies everywhere . Silence . There probably were adders in the grass or slow worms . Even Lizards . In some places the path was muddy. The trees hid another secret . Two more pools . And then a third with a dam built to serve the mill. The birds twittered . The leaves rustled . The sun was coming up and it was going to be a warm one .

Dragonflies flitted over the water . It was an inspired place to choose for a walk . So different and with extensive views over Chesterfield with its crooked spire and its Georgian styled Town Hall . All visible from this high point in the landscape . Finally the best was saved until last .

Orchids . So many of them growing either side of the path . I think they were the Common Spotted Orchid . Delicate blooms close to the ground but creating a carpet of mauve . I had not seen them since I was a child . With meadows disappearing fast and woodlands like this in decline the Orchids have gone . Seeing them today left me feeling very privileged .

Soemetimes things make you smile - the orchids did just that . Then I read my thought for the day " A flower does not think of competing with the flower next to it . It just blooms " Zanshin . Well that is true. The brambles got on in their own sweet way . The Rose Bay Willow Herb towered above all else and there right low down were those orchids . Doing what flowers do - getting on with it peacefully and giving us a shedload of pleasure .

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