Walking in Wirksworth...

Perfect place for a lunchtime stop.

A couple of weeks ago I headed off to Derbyshire to spend a few days with my two inspirational gal pals... We've done this for the last few years - getting together in the depths of winter to stay somewhere interesting, and to do a bit of creative thinking, doing, and exploring. This year we stayed in Wirksworth, and we all took wool, crochet hooks and knitting needles, with the intention of doing a bit of wooly creating in the evenings.

This has been ripped out and started again three times now... I'm not very good at knitting!

We rented a house through Airbnb, which came complete with a resident, three-legged, fluffy ginger cat who required feeding, and attention, and who probably couldn't believe his big, fat, jammy luck that Karen was staying - the softest of soft softies when it comes to cats. She always obliged by scratching those 'hard-to-reach, right there, under my chin', places for him, made particularly tricky without one of his back legs... I do believe she'd have been happy to pop him in her commodious, floral shopping-bag, and whisk him off to join all the others she'd left behind at home!

Of course, the reason we go away for a few days is because it's lovely being somewhere new, and seeing everything with fresh eyes. Within moments of stepping out to explore, the morning after arriving, we were noticing all sorts of interesting things.

A piece of fencing just round the corner from where we were staying - great colours.

A father and daughter we met en route into town...!

Lovely Delicatessen filled with bread, cheese, olives and other tempting stuff.

Proper shops.

Great name for a chemist shop - B. Payne & Son!

Better-than-usual barber.

A junk shop so crammed with stuff we left for fear of causing damage!

The houses are sturdy, stone-built affairs, piled up higgledy-piggledy on the slopes of the town. In the distance the hills are topped with the skeletons of trees waiting to be clothed in the new season's green.

Pretty little house squeezed into a gap - I wonder how far back it goes?

...and Helen made us each a little wreath as we wandered around the cobbled streets.