Tags

, , , ,

08:30.

Despite the best efforts of the orange man-baby in the White House, the world’s still here, so our day trip to Derbyshire is still on! In a humiliating climbdown, Trump has agreed to a two-week ceasefire brokered by Pakistan. His war has been a disaster for America’s reputation and exposed him for what he is, an ignorant, lying narcissist who’s been outmaneuvered by Iran at every turn. Not a single war objective has been achieved, but the moron will still declare ‘victory’.

But enough of politics for now. The sun’s shining and it’s time to pack, ready to head off to Edale and ‘carpe diem’. I’ll update this blog when we’re on the move.

12:00.

Slightly later than planned, we’re on our way travelling cross country and heading for  Strines.

13;19.

Made it!

Looking East along the ridge from Mam Tor towards Hollins Cross, Back Tor and Lose Hill. This is a superb walk with views in all directions.

23:15.

Sorry, that wasn’t much of a rolling blog. Whilst the phone reception top Mam Tor is good, the pair of us were having too good a time for me to stop and blog. So, here’s a selection of camera pictures I took which were edited when I got home this evening.

Mam Tor has been a favourite walk of ours for many years. Not only is it an interesting walk in itself, it has stunning views and a railway running through Edale and beyond, which is great for photography.

Looking down onto the railway just outside Edale as a Northern Class 195 from Sheffield heads for Manchester.
Looking back on where we’d walked from at Back Tor. Hollins Cross is in the middle distance and Mam Tor the high point of the ridge.
The view East from Lose Hill with an East Midlands Railway service en-route to Liverpool. Hope station is just below the industrial warehouse.
Walkers head up and down Lose Hill on their way to/from Hope. The viaduct on the branch line to Hope cement works can be seen just above their heads.
Back Tor with Lose Hill in the distance. The path up to Back Tor is the steepest climb on the ridge. Not everybody makes it this far!
With Edale village in the background a pair of East Midland Railway Class 170s traverse the valley.

Once we’d descended from the ridge we were in need of refreshments but the local pub by Edale station was packed. It’s still the school holidays so the area was crammed with families and young people so we didn’t hang around and looked for somewhere quieter, finally plumping for the Woodroffe Arms in Hope. The pub serves well-kept real ales and has a beer garden out of the back so it was an ideal place to slake our thirsts before beginning the journey home.

We headed back via the infamous Snake Pass, a road which is slowly falling away in many sections. Its twists and turns make it extremely popular with motorcyclists, who were out in force today. Sadly, the standard of riding (bordering on the suicidal in some cases) illustrated why not all of them make it home, giving the road a bad reputation other than just the fact it’s regularly closed due to bad weather.

The guy on the Triumph Bonneville on the left was being blasted past by two younger idiots, or ‘organ donors’ as they’re known as by the medical profession.

The pass took us to Glossop, then on across Woodhead (another bad road) to Holme moss (ditto) before we approached Huddersfield. The scenery along these roads is bleak and dramatic. The one thing missing is any decent hostelries to stop at en-route. As we neared home we noticed smoke from burning moorland West of Huddersfield in the Marsden area. Despite the wet weather we’ve had, moorland is already going up in flames across West Yorkshire, which is a disaster this time of year as it’s the nesting season.

Then, when we got home and nipped up the hill to the supermarket, we saw this. More fires towards Rishworth, the M62 and Moss Moor (where we’d been walking in the snow only a few months ago). Neither of us can remember seeing moorland fires this close to home. It looks like we may be in for a bad year.

I’ve a small favour to ask…
If you enjoy reading this or any of the other blogs I’ve written, please click on an advert or two. You don’t have to buy anything you don’t want to of course – although if you did find something that tickled your fancy that would be fab! – but the revenue from them helps me to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site (which isn’t cheap and comes out of my own pocket). Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website –  https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/

Cheers,

Paul