Never walk a bridle way in Sandals

Writing this out front of the Top Brink Pub.  They don’t open for half an hour, but they’ve got picnic tables out front, and the rain seems inclined to hold off.  I’m wearing my rainproof, but it’s not quite keeping me warm.  I’m finding that when I’m walking, my furnace kicks on and I’d be roasting naked, but as soon as I stop, everything shuts down and I’m shivering.  Didn’t think of that before I walked out of the B&B.  Well, half an hour will soon pass.

 

Thursday morning, I had breakfast with one fellow who I think went with the farm and two men who were in town with a team salvaging machinery from the closed factory.  Not much conversation.  They each established what I was doing in town, and seemed to decide that anyone likely to walk from Derbyshire to Cumbria was unlikely to have much of interest to say.

 

The proprietress drove me back to the trail head where she’d collected me the afternoon before, shook my hand, and wished me luck.  I think she was favorable to me, since I’d told her I’d brought my mother over to the Lake District with me.

 

The early part of the walk brought me into close contact with the waterworks and reservoir system I would be seeing a lot of.  A lot of the landscape I walked through Thursday and Friday was modified for flood control and water collection.  Most of the works have melded into the landscape, and look as integral as the drystone walls.  I then starteda climb back up onto a moor, this one stonier than some, and started to get great views back into the valley I was climbing out of. 

 

Early on, I passed a cluster of cows with calves, and snapped a few photos for Mom.

 

The Way continued to roll along, dipping to deal with the occasional clough, so I’d have to climb down, ford a stream, rinse the mud off my boots, then get all muddy again climbing up the other side.

 

Weather girl had again been on about that low pressure system, but it was still only overcast with just enough haze that things more than a mile away started to lose color.  The landscape was a lovely blend of the various components I described earlier. 

 

In some places, the track was worn so deep and so narrow, I had grass brushing my trouser pockets and had to swivel my hips like a parody fly girl to get my boots past each other down in the trench.  I’m struggling for a simile.  I’m stymied.  It’s like walking in a 3 foot deep, 10 inch wide trench with slippery mud in the bottom.  The only benefit is that if I fell, which I’m glad to say I haven’t yet in spite of many stumbles, I could easily catch myself on the edges.

 

I have, inadvertently, invented a new sport.  Actually, others have clearly done it before me – I can tell from their tracks – but I may be the first to recognize the possibilities.  It’s the downhill, muck skiing slalom.  What you need is a downward slope covered in wet, slick mud, most of which will give good traction, but unpredictable bits of which will shoot out from under just as your full weight gets onto that foot.  You then scoot along for a few inches or a few feet waving any handy limbs for balance and (this one’s a style choice really, but I think it adds something) shouting incoherently.

 

I once again overtook the Canadians just before the boggiest part of the day – today on top of something called Black Hill.  Both the guidebook and the map showed the trail skirting the summit by a few hundred yards.  The guidebook even had anecdotes about how numbers of people had either died or needed to call for rescue trying to get out to the post on the summit to be photographed there.  In fact, there is now a flagged track right up to and onward from the summit.  We wasted a little time making ourselves absolutely sure the trail really had moved before going on.  At least up here, it’s perfectly obvious that you’re in the middle of a bog.  There are patches of black standing water broken by obviously sodden mud.  Anyone who willingly walked out into that before the walks were put in had no place in the gene pool anyway.

 

Aside:  I’ve gotten into the pub now.  While I was waiting, it seemed like half the youth of the district was showing up in tight black tops to work as servers.  The place is huge.  I was first through the door, so I snagged a table by the radiator.  The attempt by world fashion to eroticize the lower waist by exposing a bit of it between trouser top and shirt tail has reached the youth of the Pennines.  Perhaps this means the towns have given up on it or soon will.

 

A moment of heartfelt admiration for whoever is clambering up here with all this stone and flagging the paths.  I can frequently see an old track to one side or the other of the stone path.  At the best I’d be taking step after step knee deep in the muck.  Less than 10% of the way is flagged, but so far, they’ve picked the right parts.

 

After black hill, there’s a long descent to a lower part of the moor.  For a while, I walked along a series of reservoirs.  There was then a sharp drop followed by a very sharp rise onto a higher part of the moor.  Throughout all of this, I kept swapping leads with the same foursome.  As we passed, I learned bits and pieces more about them.  Three of them are in fact Canadian, one of them German Canadian.  The fourth is French.  They’ve been walking together all over the world, including a very adventurous route through the Grand Canyon on which they ran out of water. 

 

I have since learned that two of them, Gary and Donald, spent careers in education.  Pieter was a government worker.  Philippe was, among other things, a highly decorated foreign legionnaire.  Donald (the map geek) seems to act as the organizer and keeps them on tightly rationed breaks which is why they keep catching me up.  I walk significantly faster, mostly because they’re carrying camping gear while I’ve only got clothing, a book, water, and snacks.  The youngest of them could give me 20 years, but they’re vigorous.

 

Back on the high moor, I walked along past another reservoir then the track was cut by the outflow of yet another.  The track was paved right up to that point, then disappeared into dark water.  At first, I thought the water was just barely overflowing the track.  For the first step, that was the case but another step along, there was nothing but deep water.  I don’t know how deep, of course, but considerably deeper than I wanted to step into.  I made a lucky grab for a bit of the concrete structure and swung myself up onto the spillway proper.  It was running with only a few inches of water, so was an easy crossing.  At the other side, I reversed the swing maneuver and was back on the dry. 

 

I knew the other party was just a bit behind me since I saw them starting grouse less than half a mile off.  I decided it would be a gracious gesture to share the secret of getting by dry, and I wanted a bit of a rest.  Sitting still, I felt the cold for the first time in the day.  I’d been walking in short sleeves, but keeping warm enough from exercise.  Stopped, the wind started to cut into me.  I pulled on my rain jacket and felt much better. 

 

Philippe was the first of the crew to arrive – he often gets well in front.  His English is a little weak and my French pathetic, so I just demonstrated the gate swinging trick.  He looked a little dubious, but after poking around with his stick for a while decided it really was the best plan. 

 

Just more walking until we got to the road crossing in Standedge where they turned for their campground and I for my three star accommodation.  Alan had suggested I call the local taxi company which really meant the local taxi.  He was on a call to Manchester Airport for an unknown period, so I decided to walk.  The stroll opened with nearly two miles down a high speed road.  It wasn’t very busy, just a few cars a minute, but they did zing by, and the shoulders were strewn with litter.  The only feature of interest was a cluster of broken factory buildings related, I think, to a disused quarry marked on my map.  One structure was a sort of two storey round tower out of which a light smoke or steam was rising.  I realize only as I’m writing this that it was probably a vent hole for the deep railway tunnel that was running deep under my boots just then.  I was imagining someone squatting in the ruins, but the railroad explanation makes more sense.

 

Eventually, I left the road by a very steep footpath down to an absolutely lovely little riverside path.  I was only disappointed I had two miles of ugly road and about a quarter of a mile of lovely river, but I wasn’t in the frame of mind for any extra walking.  In minutes I was at my B&B – a lightweight palace largely devoted to the arranging and execution of weddings.  I think Alan gets good rates there when he can book people in on weeknights.  Certainly, I was one of only a handful of rooms taken last night.