Coronavirus lockdown is with us again so we are enjoying our local walks. The fields are extremely soggy so started walking today down the lane from the barns to the village. This proved to be another unexpected hazard as we had a tree down on the lane preventing any cars to and from the barns. Fortunately the tree was cleared first thing Monday morning so not an inconvenience for long. We walked around the village for a circuit and then headed towards Butterley Reservoir. It’s a first for us to see a paddleboarder on the reservoir.

It was also a first on this little local walk to see some alpaca in a paddock where we usually see horses.

It can get very busy with walkers so decided to follow the old coach road for a while before heading on towards the Midland Railway Centre ‘Swanwick Junction’ and then skirting around the Butterley Pit Head, across the railway lines and back up the fields and home.

The coach road is at the site of the entrance to our local industrial heritage with the Butterley Works blast furnaces, canal tunnel and underground wharf listed as a scheduled monument on the Historic England register. We had to take a bit of a detour at one stile on the path as it was almost completely under water. The photo’s below show it a week earlier covered in ice and then on this walk under more water.

Our impromptu footpath detour took us past the Derbyshire Fire Station training centre where some unorthodox parking was in evidence.

After rejoining the footpath we walked past the former Butterley station house and railway cottages which form a little settlement seemingly in the middle of nowhere

Our next heritage site was the Brittain Pit head where some of my ancestors worked. The footpaths outside our barns form part of the network of paths walked by miners and workers to the mining, blast furnace and engineering sites.

After the pit head we crossed the railway tracks and back up the hill to the barns. It’s a really nice circular walk with a bit of heritage spotting along the way.