Belper, Derbyshire

Saturday 30th January
It was a nice day so we decided on a Peak district walk. We drove to Belper and parked in the market place. It was lovely and warm as we left the car so we wondered if we needed coats, but took them just in case. We walked up the Butts and then onto a rough lane leading out of Belper. We stopped to find a cache in a field containing a nice horse called Partridge (or that’s what it said on his stable, any way). He munched on his hay whilst we hunted. We then continued up the hill and found another cache. It was the first of a series where we had to collect the numbers from the cache to find a final cache at the end of the walk. We got to the end of the lane, crossed the road and walked onto a track that went past a reservoir and then past a farm, across a field and through farm stables. There were several horses in the field but they ignored us. We ended up in the corner of a field where we had a cup of coffee and then went for a short diversion along a footpath that was along a disused railway and under a tunnel under the A38. It was an interesting path, the sleepers and tracks were still in place. John will map it on OSM when we get home. We walked back onto our route and followed the path through a lovely bit of woodland and over a stream. We emerged into Holbrook. There was a nice pub here – the Dead Poets which served very good beer but no food. We had a bag of crisps and ate our sandwiches in an alcove near a roaring fire. It was very cosy and we had to drag ourselves away to carry on with our walk. We walked along the road and then joined a farm track that led back towards Belper. It was bitterly cold now but we found a few more caches and completed the sums needed to get the co-ordinates for the final cache. Unfortunately my PDA decided it was too cold so stopped working and we were unable to get the co-ordinates to put in the GPS. We will have to come back to find that cache another time. We had found 12 geocaches and walked 10 km.