Amber Valley By Heart: Four Towns, One Valley. Local Secrets, Quiet Walks & Honest Stories from the Bit of Derbyshire Nobody Postcards
Ripley. Heanor. Belper. Alfreton. And every village in between.
Ask somebody from round here where they're from and watch what happens. They say Derbyshire. Then they say near Derby. Then near Nottingham. Then they give up and say "you won't have heard of it", because nobody outside has ever heard of Amber Valley. It's the name on the bin lorry. It isn't a place people put on a postcard.
So here is a book that treats it like one.
Amber Valley By Heart is written by somebody who grew up in Heanor, left at nineteen because everyone said there was nowt here, and came back at forty five to find out how wrong that was. It is not a tourist guide. There are no top ten lists and nobody calls anywhere a hidden gem. It is two years of walking this valley on foot with a phone full of notes, written down properly at last.
Read it tonight. Instant download.
What's actually in it
The canal at Golden Valley on a still morning, and the tunnel under Butterley that nobody has been through in a hundred years. The Pentrich rising, where the last armed uprising in England set off from a pub ten minutes from Ripley in 1817, with the route walked and mapped so you can follow it on a Sunday. The ironworks that sent the roof of St Pancras down to London while the town it came from got driven through on the way to Matlock. Heage windmill and its six sails. Crich Stand on a clear evening, and where to park that isn't the car park. Shining Cliff Woods and Betty Kenny's tree. Wingfield Manor, where Mary Queen of Scots was held.
The bit most books leave out
A proper honest chapter on each of the four towns, written by somebody who lives here and isn't going to pretend. What Belper has and what its traders are actually saying about the high street. What Heanor lost and what's still standing. Alfreton, Somercotes, Codnor, Swanwick, Langley Mill, Crich, Ambergate, Duffield, Denby. The pits. Butterley. American Adventure. What went, what's fighting back, and why people who moved away still can't stop reading about it at eleven at night.
And the walks
Every one of them walked, timed and written from the ground. Which paths turn into a bog after October. Which stiles have gone. Where to start so you finish near a pub. Short ones for a wet Tuesday and long ones for a Sunday when you need to get out of the house. Directions written the way somebody local would give them, not the way an app would.
The spot
There is one place in this valley, twenty minutes on foot from an ordinary Ripley street, where the whole thing opens up and the light on a clear evening does something that has no business happening above Amber Valley. Most people who have lived here their entire lives have never stood there. It's in the book, with exact directions.
And there's one more thing, found by accident on a walk that nearly didn't happen. That one isn't going in the description either.
Who this is for
- People who live here and have stopped looking at the place properly
- People who left for Derby, Notts, Sheffield or further and still lurk in the local groups
- People who've just moved in and want to know what all this actually is
- Anybody who wants a proper read with a brew and something to argue about in the comments
What you get
- The full illustrated ebook, delivered as a PDF you can read on a phone, tablet, laptop or print out
- Chapters on all four towns and the villages between them
- Walk directions, timings and honest notes on conditions
- A Derbyshire and Amber Valley glossary, for the mardy nesh jitty of it all
- Free updates for life. When something changes round here, you get the new version at no extra cost
- Instant download. It lands in your inbox the moment you've paid
Belper's got the river. The rest of us have got everything else, duck.