Last March, 2022, I rode Oscar to visit the Yorkshire Air Museum at Elvington, near York. When less than four miles from my destination, on a sharp left hand bend, I hit a slippery patch of road – probably a diesel spill – and found myself sliding along the road on my thigh behind the bike. The driver of a van behind me stopped and made sure I was okay. I was happy that he’d not been close enough to run me over! But apart from some minor damage to Oscar, and some bruising and grazes (and damage to my oversuit) I was okay, and finished the ride, in due course returning home; very carefully. One of the consequences of the fall was a large haematoma on my thigh, which initially I thought was bruising, but the bruising faded after a couple of weeks. I had a large lump, the size of my spread hand and about two inches high on my hip, which has gradually shrunk but is still perceptible. The other consequence was a knock to my confidence. As a result I hardly rode the bike for the rest of the year, just a few short distances for shopping or for the annual service.

However, it seemed like a good idea to get on and ride, if only a few miles, and since I hadn’t visited Padley Gorge for several years – only about twelve miles away – I dressed up in a new pair of armoured trousers, motorcycle boots, woolies and so on, and set off. Nervous? Terrified is more like it. A faulty speedo did not help as, until I was on the main road, I wasn’t sure how fast I was going. The speedo seemed to agree with my memory at fifty. Below that? Not so much. New one on order.

But I got to the Grindleford Station cafe and found – horrors! – that parking is now charged. I resented that, and rode back up to the top of the gorge where there is free parking. Mistake number one was thinking I could walk in motorcycle boots. Well, I could, but on the whole I won’t try that again. Mistake number two was the trousers. I can live with that, but they are too hot for anything other than riding the bike. But I walked down the steep slope to the beginning of the woodland and let myself through the gate.

I feel sure that the paths were not as uneven a few years ago, and I was struck by the amount of moss around and how many trees had fallen.

You can clearly see the moss on the rocks which litter the ground, as well as the brown of fallen leaves. The trees are ancient – well, some of them – and I think they give the impression of age! The walk down hill was tricky, requiring careful footwork, though I dare say a younger person could skip along with hardly a care in the world! But the paths were muddy and eroded with exposed boulders to scramble over.

I was pleased to see the arched conduit into which the river disappears. Once upon a time it fed a water mill. The mill building remains, but not the wheel or the leets to feed it.

I squeezed out of the narrow gap to the road, crossed the railway bridge, and there was the Station cafe. Oh, and outside two motorcycles.

I couldn’t say for definite, but the Triumph was about 1960, and the Norton about 1970.

The cafe is largely unchanged, and I was able to buy black coffee and a slab of lemon frangipan to give me the energy to trudge back up the hill! And it was a trudge. Those boots were definitely not a good idea. But I returned up the gorge on the west side, where the footing, if steep, is much less uneven.

Despite the boots and the sweat from the climb, something of the serenity of the place penetrated during the walk which totalled about two miles.

As I said, the slope up from the station is steep. Initially it’s a paved road serving a few houses, but higher up one enters the National Trust estate – Longshaw – and here the path is paved with stone slabs. That is an innovation compared from my first encounter with the Gorge, but that’s fifty years or so ago! It does make the walk much easier. The gradient eases somewhat after a while and the path is alongside a precipitate slope down to the river.