RETURNING HOME VIA THE PEAK DISTRICT

DECEMBER 13, 2024

                                                           ONE VIEW FROM OUR COTTAGE

This week I would like to finally stop milking our trip of a lifetime that Fran and I took this past Spring to England and Scotland. After spending two weeks with friends on Skye and in Glasgow, we started our long drive back to London. We decided to return to rural isolation with three days in a village in England’s Peak District.  By the way, all of the images here were taken on on my iPhone, since my 16-year-old first and only digital camera finally seemed to bite the dust in Scotland. I was appropriately distressed, but the phone rose to the occasion, which once again proves that it is not about the gear. While I doubt that these images could be enlarged much beyond 8 x 10 or so, they are certainly fine for the Web. I doubt that anyone could tell that they had been captured with a phone.

Edale is not so much a village as an overgrown hamlet, deep in a valley in the heart of the Peak District. Our trip was uneventful until we got absolutely lost in a place where getting lost seemed impossible. Our cottage was one of maybe at most two dozen in Edale, with seemingly absolutely detailed instructions on how to get to the front door. The only trouble was that the directions led to at least three spots that seemed to qualify as that front door, but with no clear idea whether we were actually in the right place. In some sense we were fortunate that no one in the village seemed to be home, so I was saved from at least a half a dozen embarrassing wrong front door encounters. We even had the help of several locals, all to no avail, and our hosts were away for the weekend. It finally turned out that the crucial turn, which we had passed multiple times, was completely left out of the instructions because VRBO has a rule against showing competing accommodations. The crucial “turn right” at the inn next door was thus verboten. You know what it is like being lost in a place with only two lanes and maybe twenty houses?

                                                           UP THE PATH TO OUR COTTAGE

Our next three days were wonderful. Edale was as quaint as one could imagine, even though it turned out to be one of the central points of the outdoor attractions for the entire area. The Peak District is one of those areas that prove that “there will always be an England.” It is an area of farmland, rural villages, and wilderness of some 500 square miles that was “created” as the nation’s first National Park - in 1951! The National Park Idea obviously came very late to the United Kingdom, where almost every square foot of land has been cultivated, occupied, and fought over for more than two thousand years. This first National Park was analogous to the National Health Service, in that it was another War aim of the Labour Party that was promised to the people if they could only defeat the Nazis. There had long been a tradition of public access too the countryside, but rich and mostly absentee landlords had begun to restrict such natural and ancient rights. Just a short distance from our cottage was the sight of the first “mass trespass” on open moorland that led to the formation of the Park.

                                                           THE FIRST PORTION OF THE PENNINE WAY - ONLY 267 MILES TO GO!

The other amazing thing about the area is that it lies adjacent and between two of the largest urban conglomerations in the English Midlands - Birmingham and Sheffield - which were two of the centers of England’s, and the world’s, Industrial Revolution. Just imagine if Yellowstone was  a half hour train ride from Manhattan. Edale has a station on the original train line between the two cities, and it would be a commuter line if anyone actually lived in Edale. Most people come for the day to hill walk as if they were just going for a picnic in a city park. Fran and I encountered almost more people than we had seen in Glasgow because it turned out that our last day in Edale was a Bank Holiday Monday. Bank Holidays in England are long weekends created for holidays without actually commemorating or honoring anyone beyond declaring that the banks, and thus business, will be closed that day.

                A "BY RIGHT" FOOTPATH ADJACENT TO A LONELY FARM.

                THE PATH RAN PAST THIS ANCIENT DRY STONE WALL

                A LARGER FARM WITH AN EVEN LARGER SKY BEYOND

These views highlight the incredible skies that qualified for what Instagram  calls “cloud porn.”

                A PANORAMIC VIEW OF ONE OF THE RIDGES THAT CUTS OFF THE PEAK DISTRICT FROM CIVILIZATION BEYOND

The Peak District is criss-crossed with so many trails, paths, and rights-of-ways that there is literally something for everyone. The Park information center included hiking guides way beyond the ordinary. I found a guide for walking trails that promised an ancient pub every few miles for libation, as well as  “Miles without Stiles”, guides specifically for hiking with your dogs in the countryside so that your pups would not have to negotiate any ladders, gates or walls. Yet only a few steps from our cottage was the start of the Pennine Way, a long-distance path of 268 miles that  involved real mountain climbing all the way back to the Scottish border. Fran and I walked the first mile along an ancient canal/stream before turning back at the first stile.

                A LITTLE SPOT OF COLOR AMIDST ALL OF THE GREEN
Yet all in all the Peak District was positively tame in comparison with Scotland. We walked for miles on paved paths hundreds of years old that no Scot would have even qualified as a walk much less a hike. The beautiful valley was almost no match for the surrounding hills that cut off the district from Urban England.

                                                           A QUIET SPOT IN THE VILLAGE

We left the car in the village most of the time, but we took one wild drive a few miles away to Winnats Pass, where Fran once again navigated across 25% grades through a short section of wilderness. I find these places through “unorthodox” research, where I somehow come across collections of motorcycle guides to "wild rides" in the countryside, available to only those who bring their Ordinance Survey maps along for the journey.

                                                           OFF THE ROAD ON WINNATS PASS

This road eventually led to a beautiful village called Castleton. We stopped for an ice cream like everyone else and walked to our last church burial ground in England. The oldest gravestone that we found that we could still read was from 1367, 300 years after the Castle at the top off the hill was built that eventually gave the village its name. Peveril  Castle was built by one of the barons who came across with William the Conqueror in 1066.

                                                           AN ANCIENT CHURCHYARD, WITH AN EVEN OLDER CASTLE ON THE TOP OF THE HILL

                OUR LAST SET OF STANDING STONES IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE ON THE WAY OUT OF THE PEAK DISTRICT

                                                           WHAT HAS HE GOTTEN ME TO NOW?

We left the next day for London, with our final stop on the way out of the park on a foolish quest for our last stone circle of the trip. This was prompted by yet another bout of You Tube research. Fran was more than game, and we finally found the stones after traipsing across a farmer’s field in the pouring rain, with only a lone cow for company. I could have sworn he was laughing at us, if cows could laugh, and I would bet that he didn’t see another human that day. The stones were said to be five thousand years old. A few more hours on the Motorway we were in Heathrow, and the next day we were 6,000 miles back home in Portland.