Helen Stephenson's Derbyshire Break Pictures - December, 2005 - Highlights

"Monsal View", the cottage where we stayed in Cressbrook, is in the back row of the two rows of cottages at the top of Cressbrook. You can pick it out near the centre of the picture: it's the left gable of the set of three gable-roofed cottages near the centre of the back row.

Here's the front of the cottage. (The front door is actually on the side!) There are spectacular views, particularly from the upstairs window.

Here's the living room, where the tiled floor has under-floor heating installed. There's also an open fireplace, where you can have a coal fire. There's a well-equipped kitchen, and upstairs there are two double bedrooms.

While we were in Derbyshire, we visited some of the local tourist attractions. One of these was the Crich Tramway Village, where we took vast numbers of pictures. I've limited myself on this page to a life-size horse from the museum section, an ex-Blackpool open balcony tram on which we rode during our visit to Crich, and the red lion from the top of the Red Lion pub, which was saved from demolition in Stoke-on-Trent and rebuilt on the Crich Tramway Village site. They also have the Derby Assembly Rooms, and there's a picture of those on the page devoted to the Village which you will find later on within this site.

The other tourist attraction we visited was the Treak Cliff Cavern, where you get two caverns for the price of one, as the cavern includes both a mine for Blue John Stone and also some limestone caverns. I've included a picture of some stalactites here. All of my photography in Treak Cliff Cavern was done with the aid of a flashgun. It would have been nice to have been able to take longer exposures with the aid of a tripod, but it wouldn't have been practical!

The entrance to Treak Cliff Cavern was reached via a long set of steps set into a hillside, and the views from outside the cavern were spectacular. Here I've included a view of a field in the near distance with a shelter for a donkey, who isn't in the picture; and a view of the middle distance. Interestingly, near Castleton where this picture was taken, the fields don't appear to be divided by stone walls as they are over near Cressbrook.

We had to make a trip onto Chesterfield, which is famous for the Church of St Mary and All Saints, whose spire is 9'5" out of true.

As it was December, Chesterfield had Christmas decorations up. I took quite a few pictures of them, but the one I've included here is a zoomburst picture taken by rotating the zoom ring on my camera lens during the course of a long exposure. The result is quite abstract.

Next, I've included a few pictures taken while walking from the upper part of Cressbrook to the lower part.

There were lots of interesting mossy rocky places to look at on the uphill side of the road between the two parts of the village.

Cressbrook is quite a rural village and I enjoyed the green countryside with the River Wye running through it

On the left is a view of the River Wye near the bottom part of the village of Cressbrook, while on the right is my attempt to create a waterfall picture out of a rock in the river with water rushing over it.

The next few pictures were taken from various vantage points near the top of Cressbrook, or on the Litton road just outside the top of Cressbrook.

Just outside Cressbrook, you can see the chimney from an old mine.

Here we have a picture taken looking in the general direction of Millers Dale in which there are stone walls in the foreground and scenery which recedes into mistiness in the distance. Note the interesting table shaped hill.

That brings me to my two favourite pictures from our walk along the Litton Road at the top of Cressbrook one frosty December morning. The frost can be clearly seen in the shadows cast by the stone walls in the close-up view on the left, while the view on the right juxtaposes the mostly green foreground onto the frosty hillsides behind.

Taken on the same morning as the preceding pictures, but looking down Monsal Dale, is this lovely misty view.

Here's a tree with the last vestiges of its autumn colour still intact.

I like the way it appears here against the misty background of Monsal Dale.

This picture is another of my favourites. Taken behind Cressbrook at the start of the Litton Road, this view looks across to Monsal Head.

Here's something completely different: this picture was taken from outside the cottage at the top of Cressbrook, and caught the approaching twilight over Monsal Dale. My tripod wasn't handy at that moment, so it was taken with the lens wide open and the camera set to ISO3200. I think it might look good printed on rough watercolour paper. It's definitely not a glossy type of picture!

Monsal Head's best known landmark is probably the Monsal Head Viaduct. This no longer carries railway traffic, but has been incorporated into local walking trails, and therefore continues to be used and enjoyed by many people.

There are beautiful views along both the upper and lower parts of Monsal Dale from Monsal Head. Here I've zoomed in close for a view of a farmhouse alongside the River Wye, close to where the river passes under the Viaduct.