At the risk of embarrassing the poor chap (“too late!”
), for a while I’ve been thinking that I should pay my respects to Kev Blackhound as the man without whom this thread would not exist, and correspondingly without whom the whole Place would be much the poorer.
So I duly asked if he’d be interested in a BaM ride somewhere up his neck of the woods in Derbyshire. As he mentions above, we are both Derby Rams of the same vintage, and riding in the area would be fitting. For ages I’ve actually had Ashover on my list as somewhere to explore – it’s not well known, hiding in the Amber valley between Matlock and Chesterfield. It’s even become a bit of an obsession, so this was too good an opportunity to miss.
Due to an air-conditioning fault on my train from Milton Keynes to Tamworth (in my day we just opened the blasted window for goodness sake) I missed a connection, so it took four separate trains to bring me to Chesterfield late Wednesday afternoon. The driver fixed the fault by switching the whole train off, disconnecting it from the 25kV overhead supply, and restarting it. A rather extreme example of the “just turn it off and on again” beloved of support helplines everywhere.
A general wander through the town centre took us past the famous bendy church spire, caused by the lead covering warping the wooden frame.
Various slightly dodgy (oh OK,
very dodgy) residential estates eventually led us up onto the moors at 300m, then down into Ashover. My RegNav© didn’t let us down…
We switched our spot radars on as we entered the village, noticing the graveyard plus its extension field, the cricket pitch, and the kids playground. Time to repair to the Old Poets Corner boozer, now owned by the Titanic Brewery, an ideal place to sink a few pints. Oh. Maybe not the best choice of words there
. Kev went for the pie and I selected veggie bangers and mash. His came with mushy peas, and mine with normal peas, and a quick swap was effected to match our preferences. The live band didn’t prevent us having a good old natter about things that only old codgers find interesting, admittedly the band had more members than the audience.
As Kev mentioned, upon egressing the pub we had to spend a bit of time fixing a puncture then it was off to the graveyard for a restful night with only a light shower of rain to lull us to sleep, Gatewood for Reg and Trekkertent for Kev.
First woken at 4am by tweety birds, we finally surfaced at 7am for a quick breakfast. I’d managed to blag some milk from the pub, which had curdled nicely overnight so it was yoghurt on porridge for me
. We’d spotted a very nice little café in the village but it didn’t open until 9am, so as Kev mentioned we had a quick spin round the Amber valley first. I was aware that the once-rich Gregory Mine was here somewhere. Ashover sits on gritstone but there’s a local “limestone inlier” which resulted in lead deposits. Halfway round the ride I suddenly noticed an old mine headstock in some trees and closer inspection proved that it was the old Overton Mine, which had reopened in the 1960s to mine fluorspar. It’s very rare to find in-situ mine remains these days, so we had a good nose around. Until recently the cage was upright next to the shaft but sadly it has been tipped over to cover the 120’ hole.
A nice line of hazel bushes..
A peaceful scene in the Amber valley…
And so back for the traditional BaM second breakfast. Flowers on the table, there’s posh….
One thing I particularly wanted to see was the fine chimney at the lead-smelting site at Stone Edge Cupola, near the aptly named hamlet of Spitewinter, so Kev kindly humoured my obsession. It is the oldest free-standing chimney in Britain, built in 1770, and is located on Bellend Lane at 300m on top of the ridge to take advantage of the strong winds for the furnaces. Ah, no, hang on,
Belland Lane, which is of course a lead-mining term.
The good thing about this area is that once you’re up on the ridge there are loads of tracks and bridleways dipping in and out of the heads of the valleys leading down to Chesterfield. I’d highly recommend a visit.
We had no plans for lunch, but came across this place on the next main road, some sort of car enthusiasts centre with posh coffee and toasties on offer. Palm trees in the Peaks? Rather appropriately there were “chesterfields” to lounge around on.
Eventually it was time to head back down to Chesterfield for our 4pm trains, Kev to Derby and myself to Birmingham for some more beers with some chums there.
A very pleasant BaM, in a little known area. It was great to meet Kevin again, although I should probably have waited until my 100th BaM next year to celebrate! So, thank you Kevin, I can honestly say that your off-the-cuff-at-the-time invention has enriched my life immeasurably, allowed me to meet some great people, and given me some incredible experiences.
‘Reg’
6/6, 6/12, 90/90
I did plan to get out locally for the solstice, the actual solstice was Wednesday at 15:58 so I had planned to bivi on the Wednesday night as that's the closest to it and therefor the sunrise on the Thursday would be the first after midsummer... turns out it was the sunrise on Wednesday morning everyone got up for 
regardless, I wouldn't have been able to go Tuesday even if I had worked it out correctly.
I was about 30 to 50m into this lot so well out of site so not worried I'd be discovered by whoever was out looking for victims 
