April Follies: WIRKSWORTH to CHATSWORTH

Feel the joys of spring on this jolly jaunt visiting some of Derbyshire’s finest follies – from the star disc of Wirksworth to the Hunting Tower of Chatsworth, via Birchover’s Druid Caves!

- Kevan Manwaring

Well, you may not be a pilgrim, scallopshell in hat and staff in hand, but if blood pulses in your veins it’s hard not to feel a certain restless stirring at this time of year – the quickening of spring, I call it. One wants to be outside, and perhaps setting off on an adventure – or at least a breezy cycle ride over the rolling landscape of the southern Peak District in search of follies.

What better way to welcome in the spring with daffodils out and the hedgerows bustling with lusty birdsong?

We start our folly tour with the Wirksworth Star Disc. With a diameter of 40 feet, the Star Disc is a celestial amphitheatre and stone circle created by Aidan Shingler.It was unveiled by Pete Lawrence, BBC The Sky at Night presenter, on 10th September 2011. Whether he was any relation to DH Lawrence, who lived for a while close by at Mountain Cottage, Middleton Top, with his German wife Frieda, who can say?