The village of Youlgrave sits along the top of Bradford Dale, and a number of lanes and paths lead down to it. Willow Cottage is at the top of Bankside which winds down to Bradford Dale, coming out just below the Tea Rooms Our first two pictures show the unfortunate effects of the storm during the weekend of 20/21 March 2004. These two pictures were taken just 14 days apart, the first one week before the storm, the second the week after.

We were staying at Willow Cottage that weekend working on the new kitchen, and I remember walking out into the yard as the storm was at it's worst wondering if we'd have a roof in the morning. Thankfully, we did, but Bradford Dale lost one of its oldest trees. The boys and I were tempted to go and photograph the rings on the trunk so we could blow them up on the computer later

Upstream of the Tea Room, the river consists of a number of ponds separated by sluice gates. Ross tried his hand at fishing for trout with our old net. If the owners of the pond are reading this, we threw all of them back, honest! Actually, all we caught was pond weed, the fish were too canny for us. You can see lots of fish, and I am informed by Linda that they are Rainbow Trout, how she came by this fact, I have no idea. They looked like fish to me.

There are several sluice gates along the river, all of them are dated 1890 and 1891 and have lasted well considering they don't seem to be have been painted. I've no idea if they work or not.on and work out how old it was. We never did manage that, but it must have been over 200 years old