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Time brings changes even here, in the new houses of commuters from Sheffield, beyond the moors,but nothing can rob it of its lovely setting in the dale of the Derwent. It lies under Froggatt Edge, where the river comes down through a glory of woods and meadows to its three arch bridge, only lately joined by the Burbage Brook, which left a moorland home for the joy of sylvan glen.
The village keeps its charm of other days on the hillside where the road descends steeply from
Sir William Hill, on Eyam Moor, to the creepered inn; where grey cottages gather round a green with an old sundial. It lies at the point of a triangle of roads enriched with scenes it would be hard to surpass, 10 miles of river and rock, of lovely woods, of hill and moor.
One climbs from Grindleford Bridge through Padley Woods to the heather moors, past Longshaw Lodge to the Fox House Inn.
The lodge is an old shooting box on whose pastures famous sheep-dog trials are held in September; the inn, standing where the roads divide is a spot believed by some lovers of Charlotte Bronte to be the Whitcross where Jane Eyre was set down from the coach during her flight.
Here the road rides by the moors from east to west. One sees Burbage Bridge near the beginning of its journey, passing under the road where the Toad Rock rears its realistic shape.
On the moor beyond the rock we see Carl Wark, where nature and man combined to make a remarkable fortress, mysterious yet in its name and age, perhaps of the Saxon period, perhaps earlier. Farther north rises Higgar Tor, 1350 feet above sea-level, its great mass of rocks heaped in fantastic fashion and weathered to curious shapes.
At Millstone Edge an entrancing panorama comes upon us with such startling suddenness that it is known as the Surprise View. From this top of a moorland world which is wonderful whatever its mood, kind when the heather is all aglow and magnificent under snow, we look far down to the Derwent in its wooded vale, joined by the Highlow Brook at the end of its journey between two moors with ancient graves; we look beyond Hathersage nestling round its charming church to Bamford Edge, and on to Crook Hill rising between the Woodlands Valley and the reaches of the Upper Derwent. We look from Win Hill, Lose Hill, and Mam Tor to a dim horizon of Kinder Scout and other Peakland heights beyond the broad and lovely Hope Valley.
From Hathersage back to Grindleford the road runs in the Derwent Valley, through deep plantations under the slopes rising to Eyam Moor.
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