I go to Derbyshire as often as I can. I drag the family up there too. They don’t complain much, luckily Derbyshire has some of the best walks and cycling tracks in the country. And while they’re cycling I’m chasing after the Darcys and Pemberley. But what I could never do and always wanted to was to just drive aimlessly down tiny country lanes, barely wide enough to open the car door without hitting the stone walls on either side, and just turn into whatever road takes my fancy and sneak up the hills overlooking Bakewell and Haddon. Also, I wanted to see and take hundreds of photos of Derbyshire in the summer. The other times I went it was either early spring when all the trees were bare (and there was ice on the tent!!) or it was pouring with rain, the only other time I went in the summer.
This time I was lucky. Very lucky. I had great company (I think it’s safe to say that the only time Mira and I didn’t giggle was when we were asleep). The weather was kind, the trees were not leafless, the country lanes were as delightful as I always hoped they would be and I came home with 647 photos on my camera and about as many on my Kindle. I thought I might share some with you, but don’t worry, not all 1200 of them.
The first stop was far from Derbyshire. In fact, we barely got on the motorway when we got off again at the next junction because it was impossible to resist the temptation of a sneak peek at Netherfield.
We also knew that it had to be very accessible. No one would have taken filming equipment all the way up to some distant mountaintop, not without a helicopter. Even so, we couldn’t resist climbing to an outcrop that couldn’t have possibly been the right one, because it was up a crazy incline, not accessible at all (the road & my car were roughly there).