The Peak District - Ashbourne & Cromford Mill

It was Thursday, which meant it was our last full day in The Peak District before heading for home.

We decided to have a mooch round Ashbourne. 

I needed to find my brother a birthday present and we had also decided that we would have an early tea out today, to save cooking on our last night.  We hoped Ashbourne would fit the bill on both counts. 

We had a good wander round the moochy little shops and bought a few bits, some jam and chutney jar labels and some beautiful wool in my favourite shades of purple. Not exactly sure for what purpose yet, but something will come to me.

It was too early to eat so we headed for Cromford Mill, via Wirksworth, for a look around the old mill, where we found a lovely fabric shop. I resisted buying any fabric but did get stocked up on some iron on interfacing for another project that I have in mind.

Cromford Mill is Arkwright's first Mill and is currently in the process of renovation as you can see from the board below.

Clearly they are not on target for the original planned opening of Autumn 2013!!  In spite of that, there is still quite a bit to see on the site and it is well worth a visit if you are passing by.

Wirksworth looked lovely. Neither of us had ever been before and we definitely put it on the list for a revisit when we are next up here, which will be in November. The sames goes for Carsington Water. 

By the time we'd finished at Cromford Mill we were getting hungry and decided to head for home and look out for a nice pub on the way.

Unfortunately, this time of year anyway, none of the pubs we passed or looked at were serving food at this time of the afternoon and wouldn't be until later in the evening. 

We ended up heading for home and having a bit of a mash up with what food we'd got left kicking around. It was cheese and potato pie and roasted veg, with sausages for me and leftover chicken curry for Martin. Very nice .... And it helped clear out the fridge. Bonus. 

All in all we'd had a pretty restful week. 

We managed to get out and about.  We did done a bit of walking, a bit of cycling, a bit of caching and a bit of shopping and we managed to pretty much miss all of the bad weather when we were out. 

We had plenty of time tucked up in the cottage doing chilled out things like reading, watching films and cooking.  Martin's had a play on the PS3 and I did
a bit of crochet. 

It was a really nice break for our first holiday of the year. 

Next stop, Scotland, in May, with a trip to Balmoral Castle thrown in, to tick off two more of my things to do before I hit. 60. 

So, home tomorrow and we've still got the Easter weekend to look forward to.