wandering

We’ve not been out for a proper walk for ages, so yesterday we pulled on our boots and went out to the peak district for a wander. It was a funny sort of a day. Hot and muggy, bright, but with a grey overcast sky that makes taking decent photographs (for someone like me) almost impossible. I’ve made it look quite gloomy, but it wasn’t really!

We picked a route from a book of natural history rambles that we’ve had for years but never used. It was six miles, and said to allow 2 hours – we allowed more as we planned a picnic stop in the middle.

After an hour of walking uphill, I’m afraid we were hot and a little bit grumpy. The ground was dry, but had clearly been very wet and trampled by many cows, so it was like walking over craters on the surface of the moon. In one field the grass over the footpath was above waist height.

We stopped for lunch by an abandoned cottage, and over boiled eggs and potato cakes we contemplated what it would have been like to live here, with no neighbours or roads.

Our flasks of tea weren’t very warm (oh no!) and seeing that we still had well over two thirds of the route left, we decided to take an alternative route back to the car.

I love this part of the country, and haven’t at all done it justice with these pictures. This is the western peak district, the white peak, and it feels somehow more friendly than th neighbouring gritstone dark peak. It’s criss crossed with dry stone walls and full of sheep, not the ‘natural’ forests of ancient times but beautiful anyway, and very much a working landscape.

Our route took us high above the Manifold Valley, an old railway line which has a cycle trail running along the bottom. We followed a little-used path through nettles and brambles right down to the river.

By the time we got back to Hulme End, I was rather hot. We stopped at the cafe and I had what was possibly the best glass of fizzy pop I’ve ever tasted, in the glamourous surroundings of the car park.