Rocester to Ellastone

Having decided to walk the Limestone Way from south to north, this was our first walk on the route, completed on our way to the holiday cottage we were renting for the week, and following straight on from a walk from Uttoxeter on the Staffordshire Way. When seen as a continuation of the path we had followed from Uttoxeter, the starting point is perfectly reasonable, but it is a no frills start to a long distance path to say the least, a simple "Limestone Way" sign on an alleyway by a school (albeit the JCB Academy), which occupies the former Tetbury Mill. There was a Roman fort in Rocester and a 12th Century Augustinian Abbey, but in more recent times the the mill was the primary local employer, an honour that is now held by the JCB company, which Joseph Cyril Bamford started in an old cheese factory in Rocester in 1950.

We walked past the Church and stopped for me to change my socks, something I do at least every couple of hours when walking in warm weather; the most reliable preventative measure I have found against blisters. We then continued our walk through the village before leaving the houses behind and climbing Barrowhill, crossing the Rocester by-pass part-way up the hill. As we climbed, there were good views back to the JCB World Headquarters and the surrounding landscaped area, including a water fountain and a golf course. We reached the top of the hill and our views were now to the north, back down to the valley that contains the River Dove. There were also more distant views of the bigger hills ahead.

We descended to the river and followed close beside it for the next mile. We passed a family also out walking by the river and eventually reached an attractive bridge. This is on the road between Lower Ellastone and Norbury and seems to be known as Ellastone Bridge. There is a parking area nearby and an older couple were looking at the bridge. We turned left onto the road and walked along it for a couple of hundred metres, before taking a track to the right on the outskirts of Lower Ellastone. We were now the Calwich Abbey Estate, which was originally the location of a monastery and later a house which was -apparently - visited by Handel, Anna Seward and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Today we just had the company of alpacas, some of which might actually have been llamas.

We reached the road again, now to the east of Upper Ellastone, on the way out of the village towards Ashbourne. There were excellent views to Ellastone Church to the west, very close to our parking place by the village hall, and we left the Limestone Way here to return to the car. We could perhaps have taken a footpath up the hill to the church but we decided it was more reliable to follow the road around. The car park (at SK116435) had proved as useful as we had hoped it would be, and it is so generous of the people of Ellastone to provide the resource free of charge; we put a donation in their charity box and would encourage you to do similarly if you use the car park for walks in this beautiful and undiscovered part of the country. We drove back to Uttoxeter to shop for provisions, then returned via Ellastone and Ashbourne (which looks a nice town) to our holiday cottage.

Following leg