Totley Bus Terminus to Baslow

For a change today, and hopefully to arrive as early as possible at Bakewell to catch an onward bus, I stayed on the train until it reached Dore and Totley station; this is one of the few services from Doncaster that stops there. My original plan was then to pick up the Bakewell bus [I'd not be able to make the connection in the city centre]...but the first bus of the day wasn't due for another thirty minutes. I noticed that a local bus would arrive in three minutes and so waited for that, assuming it would be going all the way to the terminus, right on the edge of the moors. I was wrong though; after about half a mile it turned up a housing estate and the driver told me he was then heading off in a different direction. So I got off at the next stop and walked back down to the main road. At the first bus stop I checked when the next number 97 was due; it was another fifteen minutes and so I continued walking...to a few hundred yards beyond the parade of shops at Totley.

It was quite sunny when I got off the bus at the terminus and so I walked straight up to the picnic site and had a bit of breakfast and studied my map to plan an alternative walk.

From here it's only a few hundred yards to the county boundary. The first thing I had to do when I reached Derbyshire was to make some loud random animal noises and move my arms about to scare some cows out of my way which were blocking a stile. A couple of fields later and more livestock was in the way, this time a rather handsome horse which I had to entice to move from the gate by banging a rock on the wall.

I had several more grassy fields to cross until I reached the road, Moorwood Lane. I then needed to walk along another road for a short while - the views from here were very nice.

I found the footpath that leads to Horsleygate Hall.

Along this stretch, in a field next to the footpath I noticed at least two dozen beagles being exercised by a man. A few minutes later I caught up with him and he told me that he and his colleagues were exercising sixty hounds in the nearby fields; the dogs were all very well behaved though- none of them came anywhere near me.

It was then another short walk along a road before a steady climb up through woodland to the main Baslow road and then on to the access land on Big Moor. As expected the crossing of the moor was quite slow and tiring, the tufted grass, bracken and peat bog each presenting its own challenges.

The Highland cattle were in their usual spot as I took the path that leads past Wellington's Monument.

At the top of the paved section of the lane that goes down to Baslow there's a 'Restricted Byway' sign; I don't think the locals want anyone driving a vehicle up there though.

I arrived at Baslow Nether End just in time to catch the 2:15 bus back to Sheffield. This was a bit earlier than I had planned - but it meant that I got back home in Doncaster before the shops closed.