DERBYSHIRE RAMBLINGS BOOK

... loading slideshow ...

 

In 2013, to mark the tenth anniversary of the opening up of the Derwent Valley Heritage Way, Ashley - along with Mike Warner - published Derbyshire Ramblings, based on their popular articles in Derbyshire Life magazine.

The book is available online in softback.  Click here to purchase

 

'Your book is wonderful, delivering fascinating facts with humour and a down to earth feel which is very relatable' - Angela Bates

This book's playful title Derbyshire Ramblings - Walking in Circles Down The Derwent Valley -  is intended to show this is no commonplace walks guidebook. It will equally appeal to non-walkers as an entertaining coffee table trip down the 55-mile Heritage Way, with Ashley's interesting and informative prose complemented by his stunning colour photos.

Ashley unearths the rich history of 'the valley that changed the world' through the likes of Richard Arkwright and Jedidiah Strutt, and also treats us to his whimsical yet informative musings on walking, the universe and everything.

Each walk is fully detailed with a map and nature notes compiled by Derbyshire Wildlife Trust along with images of the area’s flora and fauna, taken by the region’s finest wildlife photographers.

Along the way, Ashley delves into fingerposts, squeezer stiles, millstones, hidden hydrangeas, disappearing villages, lawyer's wigs, bull baiting, sluggard waking, narrowboat living, walking as 'gymnastics of the mind', poets in motion, boots and blisters, Florence Nightingale's slippers, Little John's grave, canal restoration, cloud appreciation, countryside phobias, and why, without Milford, there would be no Manhattan.