A change is as good as a rest

February 11, 2008 by uphilldowndale 12 Comments

The thing with living in a beautiful place is that it makes you a tad lazy, beautiful landscape is all around, so there is less impetus to look else where.

But at the weekend I made a bit of an effort, I went to look at the snowdrops at Hopton Hall, in Derbyshire (and I’ll post on that in a day or so) but rather than bowling down the A roads, I pointed the car south and followed the lanes. If you don’t have a route plan, you never know when you are lost and in any case I don’t do lost, only ‘geographically confused’ but it makes it more of an adventure. The landscape I drove through is very different to home, its a lot more down dale than it is up hill, the stone is different, it’s limestone which gives the landscape a different colour palette,

 

it’s softer but I am a ‘gritstone girl’ at heart, my personal preference is more moorland. I stumbled across this place

Magpie Mine its a lead mine , records date back to 1740, but its probably older, I knew nothing about it,or of its existence, I was unlucky, as in reading up about it when I got home it seems there is usually some one around at the weekends from the Peak District Historical Society  to explain it’s history, but it was early in the day and there was no one about, in fact it felt a little eerie, so it was no surprise to read of it’s troubled and murderous history and it’s ‘widows curse’

 

I’ll come again, perhaps linking it to having a look at Arbor Low stone circle which is not very far away, but no time today, as I wanted to get to Hopton

Edit 19/02/08

In response to ‘gunner’s’ comment, I’ve added a photo, of the ground around, the mine,

I imagine a lot of the undulations to be old workings and spoil from the mine, (I think that’s known as  a bing,)  but I was taking no chances, I’d been warned,

so I didn’t wander around as much as I wanted too.

 

 

 

 

 

Technorati Tags: Hopton Hall Snowdrops, Magpie Mine, Peak District, Arbor Low, Lead Mining