Trev's travails: A nostalgic walk along Derwent Edge with Mr & Mrs Grouse

This week's walk saw us in millstone grit country; along Derwent Edge which forms the edge of the high peat moorland plateau on the eastern side of the valley above Ladybower Reservoir.

This was a nostalgic walk for the founder members of our group - it was the first main walk they undertook about a year ago.

Martin was our leader for the day and he started us off in the car park just before Fairholmes. Our route would take us by the Derwent Dam - known by many for the practice "Dam Buster" raids of the 617 Squadron in the Second World War - up Green Sitches and along Derwent Edge which has several examples of unusually shaped gritstone tors which have been formed by the actions of wind, rain and frost over many centuries.

These tors have been named over the years by local residents and have now been officially titled on Ordnance Survey maps. These include the Cakes of Bread, the Wheel Stones (aka Coach and Horses - note this is nothing to do with the Thornbridge pub in Dronfield), and the Salt Cellar.

We would then walk down to Ladybower Reservoir via High Home Farm and the submerged remains of Derwent village.

Martin telling us how the "Lost Lad" cairn of stones got its name - it brought a tear to Eric's eye.

According to legend, a young shepherd boy Abraham Lowe, from Derwent, ran a small farm with his widowed mother. One winter when the village was cut off by heavy snowfalls and icy weather, Abraham's mother sent him off to locate the sheep and bring them back to the farm. With a cheerful wave and a word of farewell, he set out for Derwent Edge with his dog by his side.

After the steep climb, he left the valley and made his way to the snow-covered moorlands of Bleaklow. He found some sheep and began to round them up. Working single-mindedly with his dog, he did not notice that the weather was deteriorating. It began to snow again, and a thick mist came down. Before long, it was impossible to recognise any of the landmarks he knew so well. He decided to bring back just those sheep he'd found, and tried to head for home.

After hours of struggling through the snow and mist, he had to admit to himself that he was lost. The snowfall was now a blizzard, and Abraham crawled under a rock to shelter. Then he waited, hoping that the bitter weather would abate. But alas, it did not. Before he finally gave into the exhaustion caused by the coldness, he found a stone and scratched the words 'LOST LAD' on the rock. Then, frozen and weary and hungry, he fell asleep.

He never woke again, and his dog stayed with him until it too died.

Abraham's mother watched the high snow-covered hills from her farmhouse window, hoping to see her son return. As night came on, hope faded, and it was the next day before she set out with her neighbours to search for the boy. They searched all day but they found no trace of him. Everywhere was pure white, the blizzard having wiped out the footprints.

The search was resumed the next day, but in vain. Eventually the hope was abandoned and it was not until spring that another shepherd, spotting the words 'LOST LAD' scratched on the rock, investigated further and found the remains of Abraham and his dog. He made a small pile of stones to mark the spot, and for over 100 years, every shepherd who passed added another stone. This grew into a huge cairn and can still be seen today, on the high moorlands near Back Tor.

From time to time, the ghosts of the lost lad and his sheepdog have been seen wandering in the winter snow, the last reported sighting being in February 1993, when a Manchester school teacher saw the two.

Some of the unusually shaped rocks

"Trig point" Andy found this one and just had to visit it - that's another one to tick off his list!

The Coach and Horses

If we had been looking for pareidolia (which we weren't), some might claim to see a dolphin in these rocks

Mr Red Grouse poses ...

... to an appreciative audience

Mrs Grouse hides away in the heather

Back down to Ladybower

Eric taking a power nap

The lost villages of Derwent and Ashopton

Derwent is a village 'drowned' under the Ladybower Reservoir. The village of Ashopton, Derwent Woodlands church and Derwent Hall were also 'drowned' in the construction of the reservoir. There is no formal memorial to any of the villages. However, the site of the construction workers' temporary village when the higher Derwent and Howden Reservoirs were built is clearly marked by a plaque. The only marker of the location of Derwent is the village's War Memorial which stands above Ladybower Reservoir at a point to the west of the village.

The most significant surviving reminder of Derwent Village is the village's packhorse bridge. This originally spanned the River Derwent near the main gates of Derwent Hall, and was removed stone by stone as it had been designated a monument of national importance. The bridge was transported and rebuilt at the head of Howden Reservoir at Slippery Stones where it now forms part of the paths and cycle tracks around the Derwent Valley reservoirs.

The church held its last service on 17 March 1943. The bell from the church may still be heard in Derbyshire, however, since it was re-hung in St Philip's Church in Chaddesden, built in 1955. Bodies from the graveyard had been exhumed in 1940 and were reburied in Bamford.

All buildings in the village had been demolished by autumn 1943. The church spire was left intact to form a memorial to Derwent. However, it was dynamited on 15 December 1947, on purported safety concerns. The site of the village was been revealed when the reservoir levels fell dramatically in 1976, 1989 and 1996.

Despite being flooded, a few houses survive above the waterline, and there remains a civil parish of Derwent. At the time of the 2001 UK census, it had a population of 51.

Even though this gate was already open when we walked by, we wondered whether we could possibly be liable to the penalty not exceeding forty shillings on the grounds that we omitted to shut the gate - over to you M'lud

Then back to Derwent Dam. The Industrial Revolution and urbanisation of the 19th century created huge demand for water in the industrial cities of the East Midlands and South Yorkshire. The proximity of Sheffield and its neighbours to the Upper Derwent valley were factors in the decision to dam the valley to create the Howden and Derwent dams.

The neo-Gothic solid masonry dam was begun in 1902, a year after Howden was started, and proved a mammoth task. The huge stones that formed the walls of the dam were carried along a specially created railway from the quarries at Grindleford. Over 1,000 workers lived in a specially constructed self-contained town called Birchinlee or "Tin Town". One of the metal huts was preserved and moved to the village of Hope, where it is now a hairdressing salon. The workers that died during the construction of the dam were buried in Bamford Church.

The reservoir was first begun to be filled in November 1914, and overflowed for the first time in January 1916, with the water almost immediately passing into supply. The dam can support a total of 9.64 million cubic metres of water. The Howden and Derwent dams were built between 1901 and 1916, they were finally opened in 1916 by King George V.

Only two years after the dam's completion in 1916, it was decided that the flow from the reservoir was insufficient to support the surrounding population. As a result, between 1920 and 1931 the rivers Alport and Ashop were also diverted from the Ashop valley into the reservoir using tunnels and a Venturi Flume.

Just a brief note for all you railway enthusiasts - between 1901 and 1903 a standard gauge railway of over 7 miles was built from the town of Bamford to the south of the reservoir to Howden, to carry the thousands of tons of stone required for the construction of the two dams. Near to the southern end lay the newly opened quarry at Bole Hill near Grindleford.

Remains of the railway can still be seen alongside Derwent Reservoir as well as at the western end of the Ladybower dam where over 1.5 miles of cutting and trackway remain, and are known locally as 'The Route'. Between the Howden and Derwent dams the present road was built over the top of the railway.