Hartington lollipop

I've written some walks for a site on the internet, walkingworld.com, and every now and then, I like to re-do the walks to make sure the instructions are correct. Sometimes the odd thing changes, a new finger post, stile etc. This week it was the turn of my 'Hartington lollipop' walk, so called because you go up the stick, around the head, then re-trace your steps down the stick.
The walk starts in Hartington village, to my mind one of the loveliest in the Peak district. It has the famous cheese shop, the duck pond, and a couple of nice pubs. This was the view as we started the walk with the church peeping over the cottage rooftops.

A lot of daffs were in full swing in the village gardens, along with other spring flowers.
And, of course, the spring lambs were now in abundance.

These were just a couple of days old, and this was their first outing.

See bottom of this entry for a video of them running about and bleating.

The sky was blue, and it was a PERFECT day.
It does the soul good to walk on a day like this :-)

I never tire of the green/blue/white of the grass, sky & limestone walls.

Sue was enjoying being back in shorts & tee shirt again.

After crossing the fields, we came to Beresford dale, and Pike pool.
Izaak Walton, of 'The Compleat Angler' fame, fished hereabouts with the viator Charles Cotton.

As my all-singing SLR was 'at the hospital', I was back to my old Fuji finepix camera. I could have done so much more with this weir had I had my SLR. Mind you, it still looks nice.

Wolfscote dale, nicely quiet mid-week.

A happy Sue takes in the view and sound of babbling water.

LOTS of daffs along the riverbank.

Last years skeleton overlooks the new daffs.

I'm in heaven too.

The Coldeaton bridge, and path up to Alstonefield.

This is where we had lunch. I LOVE sitting here, just looking at this spectacular landscape.
We never take for granted how lucky we are to live in the National park.

Next, along this green lane, to pass the youth hostel, again lined with daffs.

As we turned to start our return part of the walk, we saw this feeding frenzy of sheep on Gratton hill.

Whatever that farmer has must be REALLY tasty!

We then dropped into the quaintly-named 'How Narrow dale', before reaching Beresford dale, and re-tracing our steps back to Hartington. The sky had gone greyer now, but we had had a lovely day.

A video of the new lambs (turn the sound up).