Autumn Footprints 2019 - Festival Launch Walk
w/e 15 September 2019
All of this week's pictures were
taken with a Kodak DX6490
The Green Room in the Shipley Country Park Visitor
Centre was packed on Saturday morning 14th September for the
launch of the 2019 Autumn Footprints, the seventeenth annual
Walking Festival in Amber Valley and Erewash.
After the opening speeches by the respective Mayors of Erewash
and Amber Valley and the presentation of commemorative badges
to the Walk Leaders, the Civic Party proceeded outside for the
traditional photocall with their consorts.
|
They were joined by some of the Walk Leaders and other walkers
for more photos before a record number of fifty one walkers for
a launch walk set off on the first of forty two walks in the
Festival.
|
The walk to launch the sixteen day event was an easy three mile
route through the park with frequent stops to learn about the
wildlife and history of the park. The first stop was at Osborne's
Pond, one of three reservoirs originally built to serve the Nutbrook
Canal but which is now a beautiful lake inhabited by a large
variety of waterfowl.
|
From there, we climbed the hill towards Cinderhill Coppice. Walk
leader Ben Wain described how left to nature the landscape would
change through scrubland to eventually become a wood but that
tree planting in the 1970s on the former slag heap from the coal
mining legacy had failed twice before eventually taking to create
Cinderhill Coppice which was now reaching maturity. We then turned
left to cross a wildflower meadow that is managed by being mowed
annually to retain the habitat for wildlife, some of which as
if to order appeared in the skies above.
|
We continued via Derby Lodge and the Suffragette Wall up Shipley
Hill to the site of the former Shipley Hall.
|
It was here that Ben recalled the history of the estate which
has links to William the Conqueror in the eleventh century through
to the Miller Mundy family's ownership in the twentieth.
See this section on the website for more Miller Mundy Memories.
|
Leaving the Hall site, we passed through the ancient woodland
to drop down the hill and skirt the Memorial Wood where every
tree planted is in memory of someone. Some of these trees too
are reaching maturity but still nowhere near the size of those
in the ancient woodland.
|
Autumn fruit was well in evidence as we followed the path to
re-enter the ancient woodland and walk through to Shipley Lane.
|
At Shipley Lane we paused again to view the former opencast site
in the distance that has been acquired by the Woodland Trust
and renamed Mead and where thousands of trees are to be planted
to form the Young People's Forest.
|
We continued along Shipley Lane to Home Farm where we could see
most of our route back to the Visitor Centre. This was along
Bell Lane which can be seen where the hedgerow runs from the
centre of the picture to the left, then along the footpath by
the field full of hay bales past Flatmeadow Farm and the Mead
site beyond. At other stops on the way, Ben described the benefits
of old hedgerows (many of which have been grubbed out with modern
farming methods) and also of old farm buildings and barns such
as those at Flatmeadow, a haven for Barn and Little Owls. All
in all, the whole walk in pleasant autumnal weather was an educational
and very enjoyable way to pass a couple of hours in one of the
gems of the Derbyshire countryside.
Route Map
|
