What a gorgeous weather day, a cold wind at times but sunshine and big blue skies for the most part!

A couple of weeks ago I'd suggested that we do a walk north of Mickleover and that's where we headed today. Radbourne and then Lees, we know that bit well, then onto Brailsford church (see extra) for lunch... but first a walk around a series of small lakes that had caught John's eye on the map. Apparently a local engineer has created the area for fishing, it looks very scenic and there were quite a lot of fishermen there, but we weren't supposed to have been. We made our exit by finding the footpath that runs straight through the middle! 

Back to the church for our lunch stop and then into Brailsford village, which is unfortunately cut in two by the very busy A52. It's got a couple of shops and a pub and there's a new housing development, but the traffic is incessant. I drive through it fairly regularly but I wouldn't want to live there.

Onward to the edge of the Kedleston estate and then the water tower at Mackworth came into view and we were on the home stretch. 

At this point our walk turned from type 1 fun to type 2, we were really tired and bits of us had begun to hurt, but it was a good walk, I really enjoyed it.

17.6 miles
1089 feet elevation gain