Lath-Chill dale!

On Monday, as we didn't open the cafe, we decided, among other things, to go for an afternoon walk in Lathkill dale. It being designated as a 'backwater' sort of place, the council don't deem it worthy of grit, so the road to it was.......'interesting'!!

This is the old craft centre, now a holiday let, I think.

Snow on berries - I never CAN resist them.

Some of the locals cars look like they've not bothered trying to get out at all.

Well ICED too, I'd say!

We took the winding road down into the dale. Some lovely Christmassy card scenes on the way. Amazingly, I saw tyre tracks in the snow, and a local lady told me that the milkman had made a delivery that morning!

Over Haddon church.

How much snow is on that bench, do you reckon?

....and this one.

 This is one of Sue’s favourite shots of the barn right in the bottom of the dale.

The clapper bridge over the river Lathkill. We weren't crossing this today, heading up this side of the riverbank.

Snow sticking to the branches of the trees.

Very few people had been down here since the snow fell. It really was beautiful.

Sue was enjoying it.

A series of weirs, with a nice contrasting green against the snow.

Oh no, MORE berries!

And, of course, the cow parsley pearls of snow.

A bunch of keys.

One of the old railway bridge pillars.

This looks SO inviting. You can take a walk in the dale with me here;
WALK IN LATHKILL

Mirror perfection.

A small wooden bridge crosses the river to an old workings. It SO fits in with the dale. See the bridge in a movie here; BRIDGE 

A bower of snow.

You can see just how deep it is here in the dale bottom.

Hold on........HOLD ON......!

Pressing on towards the waterfalls.

First passing a small weir.

Through this too-good-to-disturb gate.

Oh, what have you spotted, Sue?

We came across this, how cute of someone to make a small snowman, and then add the dog!

Icy fingers claw at the waters edge.

Yes Sue, it IS deep.

My goal was to walk up as far as the waterfall, and I thought we’d JUST have the time and light.  

As expected, it was more in spate after the recent rain and snow, so it looked lovely in the approaching evening light.

After this, we hurried back to the car, and home to a nice hot bath, a glass of red and a sit down.