Saturday was a beautiful summers day, so I travelled out to the Peak District to walk around the not-ironically named Hathersage. I must be fully acclimatized, because after walking around 11km in 19C temperatures I found it just a little too warm. But it was, indeed, a balmy day in the countryside.
Hathersage is a pretty village in a valley above the Derwent river (they steal all our place names here!). Sheep farms dot the hillsides in an impossibly domesticated rural landscape. Public footpaths wind around the hills, taking you through private farmlands as well as country paths.
The most entertaining aspect of the trip was trying to decipher the guidebook. These walking guides have a language all their own. I suppose the authors think it all very clever and parsimonious, but half the time the instructions left me bewildered. For example: 'leave through a gate on the left and walk upfield above the beck...Eventually, pass out through a gate in the right-hand wall and bear left up the field to a stile.' And this one: 'A contained path drops through the field, a trod continuing beyond down the hill leading you to the banks of the River Derwent.' And my favourite, 'Climb on at the edge of successive fields, bypassing a redundant stile...Carry on, the way now more level, to another stile, over which keep right to a small gate. Now strike out across a final field to a squeeze gap onto a lane.' The reality is that 'strike out across a final field' could have taken me in almost any direction, and led me to miss the path by half a mile. I wandered around a field among curious cows for 20 minutes trying to find the path at the other end. After reading several pages of this it really does get too much. Is it too difficult to use the words, 'straight ahead', 'left' and 'right'? Apparently it is.
Anyway, it was a very nice walk. And I encountered no bobble-hatted ramblers, and only one idiot carrying a ski pole to help him walk up and down those rugged hills. I mean, really! It would be like carrying a walking to stick to make your way around a golf course.
1 comment:
Here are a few more technical walking terms that you might enjoy: 'squeeze hole', 'sunken lane', 'ladder stile' and 'kissing gate.'
Jokingly you make a reference to the name of the River Derwent being stolen from elsewhere; well I know of two other rivers with the same name, one in the East Riding of Yorkshire and the other in the Lake District.
Post a Comment