The Beast of Bolsover dons walking boots to help celebrate English Tourism Week

February 2012

History, heritage and the Beast of Bolsover will help deliver an English Tourism Week launch for a Walking Festival featuring a Crooked Spire, Pudding Bags and a haunted canal! Visitors to the Peak Districts Historic Border Country in May will be able to don their walking boots to follow in the footsteps of the wealthiest woman in Elizabethan England, visit the home of Ice Age man and tackle the Beast of Bolsover. And launching the programme for 2012s annual Chesterfield Area Walking Festival will be local MP and keen walker Dennis Skinner. His fearsome nickname of the Beast of Bolsover is commemorated in a beast of a walk for the Festival, a hike through the areas coal mining country passing historic houses along the way. Marking English Tourism Week (10 - 18 March 2012), Mr Skinner who has a formidable 42 years as a Labour MP representing his Bolsover consituency will launch the Festival during a visit on Friday 16th March 2012. Mr Skinner, who has just turned 80, is a keen cyclist and walker and will be promoting the Festival as well as the many walking and cycling opportunities in the area before touring visitor attractions Bolsover Castle, Hardwick Hall and Creswell Crags. The sixth annual Chesterfield Area Walking Festival, and the biggest to date with 58 walks, takes place 12th - 20th May. Walkers, ramblers and strollers can enjoy beautiful countryside, charming villages and one of Englands oldest market towns with most walks free. Along with the 20-mile Beast of Bolsover, other walking highlights include a Chesterfield Football Club walk highlighting quirky sites and facts along the way, a linear walk from the Crooked Spire Church out to Bolsover Castle and a stroll around Sutton Scarsdale Hall or Hardwick Hall. The more unusual walks include Of Pudding Bags, Appletree Knolls, Civil Wars and Views Afar looking at some of the local history of the area (and explaining the walks title!) and The Haunted Canal, a ghost walk taking in tales of the haunted Chesterfield Canal tow path. Theres also the Chesterfield Murder Walk, an atmospheric tour around this medieval town in the footsteps of murderers and their victims, and Chesterfield Art Walk From a Crooked Clock to a River of Rock, a chance to discover amazing works of art by famous artists such as Barbara Hepworth, Angela Conner and David Mach. For a full programme of walks contact Chesterfield Tourist Information Centre, Tel: 01246 345777/8 or go online to book at www.chesterfieldwalkingfestival.co.uk

Editors Notes: For media enquiries please contact: Bernadette Wainwright, Chesterfield Tourism. Tel: 01246 345779 Email: Bernadette.Wainwright@Chesterfield.gov.uk