I started at Rowsley, walking along the Pilhough road until I took a path which climbed up fields towards Congreave. The path comes out at the bottom end of the village and I continued along the road leaving the village, going further downhill.
The next section of the walk was uphill again, across more fields, and looked quite challenging on the map; yet I didn't really need to stop for breath...maybe I'm getting fitter or my bronchitis is getting better.
I arrived at Stanton in Peak and walked through most of the village. To me, it seems to have an austere appearance and to be somewhat out-of-place in the Peak District; I'm sure it wasn't just the weather - which wasn't too bad and was improving all the time.
At the bottom end of Stanton I found my intended footpath, but about twenty minutes later I was in the wrong place because I'd been concentrating on the cricket commentary on the radio and hadn't bothered to look at the map. I wasn't lost...merely in the wrong place.
I'd taken a track and then a lane which ran pretty much parallel to where I'd already walked and ended up just a few hundred yards further down the Congreave road. I walked across a bridge over a dangerous-looking River Wye and then reached the main road.
It was about half a mile to the main entrance to Haddon Hall; unfortunately you can't see anything of the house from the road. You can get decent views looking through binoculars from the nearby high ground though.
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I then walked alongside the river to Bakewell. It was sunny when I arrived there and I had sufficient time to look around the market and shops. I bought a pie for my tea from the farm shop. I looked in the window of the Chatsworth Farm Shop and when I noticed that it was charging £4.95 for quite a small pork pie, I went to the other shop.
