Twenty walkers gathered at the entrance to Cliffe Park on a pleasant Thursday evening. The walk leader, Phil told us about the plaque showing that the park had been donated to the town of Dronfield by Alderman J.G Graves, who was a well known businessman and entrepreneur in the Sheffield area.
We left the park via an exit in the far corner which took us to the path that runs alongside the cricket pitch used by Coal Aston teams. From here it was only a short distance to the entrance to Firth Wood ,and yes, I’m sticking with Firth Wood for nostalgic reasons :-). After walking almost the full length of the wood we emerged at the bottom of the Riddings. Although it’s a fairly steep climb up the field, the terrain flattened out when we reached Summerly Lower Road.
Just before reaching the footpath across the fields to Unstone, Richard and Ruth pointed out the spot where the Tramway linking the coal mines of Apperknowle and Unstone would have passed under the road. You can read some details about the Tramway here. The downhill stretch into Unstone brought us out onto the Unstone Line where we stopped briefly to look at the boards packed full of information about Unstone’s industrial heritage. On our way back to Callywhite Lane we had a water stop in Metapic Wood.
Thanks to Phil for leading this 4.5 mile walk which had a bit of everything.
