Ladybower Reservoir

We travelled back from Sheffield today via the Snake Pass which is a very long, winding road through the Peak District, which passes Ladybower Reservoir.

Ladybower was built between 1935 and 1943, and then resulted in the flooding of the villages of Ashopton and Derwent. The buildings in Ashopton were demolished before the reservoir was filled, but a lot of the buildilngs of Derwent village were still visible during a dry summer some years later. The clock tower of the church had been left standing and the upper part of it was visible above the water level until 1947, when it was seen as a hazard and demolished with explosives. But apparently parts of the village can still be seen today if the water levels drop during warm summers.

In World War II, Lancaster bombers used the reservoir for practicing and testing Barnes Wallace's bouncing bomb before the famous Damb Busters raid in the Rhine Valley in Germany.

It's a really pretty area, and we decided to stop for lunch at the Ladybower Inn overlooking the reservoir. Unfortuantely, the weather has been very grey and damp today, so it was difficult to get any nicely lit photographs, but I like this one with the stormy sky and a bit of light at the end of the valley.