Flat!
- Stewart
- 2 hours ago
- 5 min read
Lots of things in life have been a bit flat since my last post. It started with with the discovery of the flat front tyre on my gravel bike. Whilst that alone would be enough the dampen the spirit in normal times, trying to fix a puncture with a postoperative right hand which seems to have flat-lined in its recovery is really something that I'd rather have avoided. Never mind, I'm off to see the surgeon next week, and I'm sure he'll advise me that my rate of recovery is normal.
Despite the associations with the date, Friday 13th found me being informed that the metrics from my latest blood tests were flat and that the hour of lying flat in the scanner
showed no skeletal lesions so there'd be no need to start chemo for the next three months at least. The scan did throw up some issues with my shoulder tendons, so I've been referred to orthopaedics about that. I'm seeing the surgeon next week as he's the same bloke who spent a couple of hours removing excess collagen from my hand three months ago.
Saturday 14th and more flatness as Leicester Tigers lost to Bath in the Premiership Rugby final 23-21. An outcome on which Flats – aka former Bath and England prop-turned-pundit David Flatman – did his best to remain neutral. Something he wasn't very good at. Just like his propping ability!
Having worked myself up in case what I was to hear on Friday 13th wasn't what I wanted to hear, the lack of bad news had left me feeling a little flat, so to perk myself up I went for a pedal with Mrs Bygone Boozer. We decided to go to the relatively flat lands of the lanes around Ashbourne before home along the Tissington and High Peak Trails.
So it was down through Brassington, around Carsington Water, stopping for a bottle-filling and comfort break at Millfields...
...before passing Bradley's All Saints Church...
...entering Osmaston Park on is bridleway...
...passing the old water mill en route...
...to a refreshment stop at Prestons Coffee Bar in Ashbourne.
With caffeine levels topped-up, it was essentially a freewheel through residential culs de sac and along bike paths down to Ashbourne Station or, in reality, down to what little there is that remains of Ashbourne's station.
The railway arrived in the town in 1852 with the North Staffordshire Railway's branch line from Rocester. In 1890 the London & North Western Railway was given approval to construct a line from Parsley Hay into the town and a new joint station was built to serve both.
With the railway expansion came an increase in the number of passengers. With more passengers came the need for more accommodation and up sprung a number of hotels close to the station. One of these was the imaginatively named Railway Hotel. Situated on Station Street it couldn't have been much closer to the station.
It doesn't come as much of a surprise to discover that there's no mention of any hotel on Station Street in the 1891 census. As we've seen recently with HS2, rail projects are not completed overnight! However, by 1895 the Railway Hotel was in existence when Bulmer's directory named one George Cannon as the proprietor...
...and he, along with some of his wider family, was still in residence at the time of the 1901 census.
By the time of the next head count George had married and had moved on to another Railway Hotel. The one in Congleton. His place in its Ashbourne namesake had been taken by Hannah Mann who had previously been running the (Blue) Bell on Upper Parliament Street in Nottingham. It's nice to know that both of these establishments are still operating, although not necessarily under their original name.
George Cannon's second Railway Hotel is still open, but his first is not. When did it close? I can't ever remember it being open and I arrived in Derbyshire in 1980. It is listed in old telephone directories up to 1974 (Ashbourne 2652) but fails to make an appearance in the 1976 and subsequent editions, so that could pretty much point to when last orders were called for the final time on this Ind Coope pub and it was converted for residential use.
How do I know it was an Ind Coope establishment? The ghost sign on the gable end advertising Double Diamond was a bit of a give away.
It has recently been painted over, but I'm pleased the current owner felt obligated to keep some of the building's history exposed.
The Railway Hotel has gone, and so has the railway it was named after, but the track bed is now used as a traffic-free trail to take you into the heart of the White Peak. The Tissington Trail takes you from Ashbourne up to Parsley Hay and, for the main part, is pretty flat, for its thirteen or so miles. The old signal box at Hartington Station offered the opportunity to grab some more refreshment. OK , for refreshment read caffeine...
...with some evidence of the trail's origin with the London & North Western Railway.
Arriving at Parsley Hay we turned onto the High Peak Trail and followed it to Minninglow before rejoining tarmac for the final couple of miles home. Quite a good day. Forty-three miles which the hand coped with reasonably well, all the time helping publicise Myeloma UK. Well, it was Myeloma Awareness Week.
The Ordnance Survey map extract is copyright and has been reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland under the terms of this CC BY licence.
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