Out & About: Winster & Birchover

Monday 27 April 2015

Winster & Birchover

Winster

Winster Market House (The first property bought by the National Trust in the Peak District.)

This week we ended up at the lovely village of Winster a charming village with lots of listed buildings was formerly a lead mining centre.. We parked in the car park on the outskirts at about 06:45. With the rain we had overnight we decided to try and keep to solid paths and away from fields to avoid any sludge. We headed up the main street and stopped to view the many beautiful buildings. The first stop was a small garden centre with the front garden just full of plants for sale and when there was no one about and you wanted to buy some you could put the money through the letterbox, how trusting is that. Carrying on up the street we passed some amazing buildings but the only thing wrong was the amount of cars parked and spoiling the effect. There was this lovely yard and I just had to take a pic, we had to move a bin that was spoiling the shot although it was put back straight after.

We soon got to the edge of the village and onto a country track which we followed all the way through Upper Town where there were some strange miniature stocks. From there it was onto Birchover. The thing that was very noticeable on the road out of Winster was the huge amount of old ruined barns, they were scattered everywhere. We carried on through Birchover and followed the track to Barn Farm which is a lovely modern camp site. There were peacocks running around and a herd of Alpacas. The grounds were immaculate and hidden away in a corner is an old Derbyshire Guide Stoop dating back from around 1610. We had our breakfast there and then the route back to Winster was across fields with some cracking views over to Robin Hoods Stride and Winster. Unfortunately for me there was one deep sludgy area and I managed to get stuck in it with mud up to my ankles, that’s life!!