Don’t worry, we have not annoyed the residents of any seaside county by actually going to the beach, we are all still being very sensible here and I am still not leaving the village. Today marks 11 weeks since I left Marsden, on our little pre-lockdown trip to the fabric shop. Little did we know then that we were going to be in our homes for so long!

Ellen came up on Tuesday rather than at the weekend as the weather forecast was not good and we went for a very long, and quite hot, walk, right over to the other side of the village and onto the moors. I thought I would share some of the photos with you as it was a very beautiful day.

We started off in the middle of the village near the church where there is a lovely pack horse bridge and a weir. This cottage had the most enormous poppies in the garden that you can just see in the above picture.

This river comes out from one of the other mill sites, the only one to have been demolished and there are now houses there, some right next to the weir.

A walk though the woods next to the canal led to this example of a sheep fold, which was built as a demonstration of dry walling. There are a couple of sheep sculptures inside and it shows how they would contain the sheep while they sheared them, getting them in through the high gap and blocking off the little exit until each sheep had been done.

There are still lots of gorgeous rhododendrons in bloom and we also came across another example of the lovely tree that we found on our last walk. Ellen now has a plant finder app on her phone so we were able to establish that it is a hawthorn and the little rose buds had now fully bloomed and were looking beautiful.

The cottages above are at the end of the canal near the canal heritage centre and they were probably built for the workers that used to mend the boats when the centre was operational.

We were headed for a little bit of the river known locally as Marsden beach where we had a picnic and a paddle. There were quite a few families there and it was lovely to see the children playing in the water.

The ‘beach’ part of the walk has some lovely areas leading from it up into the moors so we followed the path along the river, passing another bridge until we came to part of the moor known as Eastergate.

This is National Trust land, as is all of the land around here that is not part of the Peak District National Park and as at other points there is a sculpture linking the landscape with the industrial heritage.

This was part of the trail where the wool would be brought over the moors and is now a brilliant area for picnics and paddling on a hot day. We were lucky enough to find ice cream on sale in the village when we got back as some of the cafes are doing take away so finished our walk with an ice cream by the river.

A really lovely, lovely day, doing such normal but very special things now and finished off by the delivery of my new table and chairs which had arrived while we were out. My lovely neighbours had taken them in and so I finished the day replanting my hanging baskets and sitting outside with a glass of wine in the evening sun.

The sheep have very kindly not eaten any of my plants, unlike my poor neighbours who have spent a lot of lockdown planting what the sheep have been treating as a salad bar. Luckily they don’t seem to like geraniums 🙂

Of course being Yorkshire we are now having a cold spell to celebrate the start of June but hopefully things will brighten up next week as we are planning our first Wool and Wine live meet up. There will be six of us, in the same space, with wine and nibbles, how exciting is that!

I have done very little on the crafting front as I have been working on my jigsaw on the nice sunny evenings, it is lovely to sit with the back door open and listen to the birds. I have just started a new embroidery from my vintage stitching book and will hopefully have some time this weekend to get back to the Liberty quilt blocks as I have sadly neglected them in the last few weeks. Never mind there will be plenty of time after the doctorate is finished.

I hope that you have all been having a good week and that you have a good weekend ahead. Take care, stay safe and thanks for visiting.