Rest Day, With Walk

Lazy morning. Will slept in. Slept almost 12 hours in fact. Galen was lost in the land of Risk: playing Risk, thinking about Risk, talking about Risk. I went for a run, out the driveway and south on the road (fun area: there's a FOREST, a real rarity in these parts, with blueberry plants growing on its edge; a farm with donkeys; a driveway that said Out Of Bounds For All Military Vehicles). So we got going at about 11. Warm and windless: for me it was our first t-shirt day!

Our first task was to help Aprille assemble, for the first time, her new tent. It is a big, three-room affair which she will be taking to a bluegrass festival in Wales later this summer. Its size makes it a bit daunting to put up, but we managed, figured out all the details, and then packed it up again. And fit it back into its original bag, which, if you've put up a lot of tents, is really the mark of good work.

After lunch, we set out for an authentic Peak Park ramble with Aprille and Molly. Our goal was to go from Boosley Grange to Bridge End, a farm next to a bridge over a tributary to the river Manifold (named for its many folds), and return; outbound via Smedley Stych, return via Halhill (these are both farms). Really all you're doing in this peak district walking, around here at least, is walking through people's farms and long-used public footpaths.

It's a bit odd. If the original intent and use of these paths was for farm families to visit one another, the current use as recreational walking is very different. Instead of knowing the way, we read maps, but unlike a trail system there's often no trace on the ground of which way the footpath goes. The confirmation that you're on the right track is the stile with the "Peak Park" tag on it you come upon in the next fence or hedgerow.

This walk was about 4.5 km, and on it we walked mostly through grassy fields with cows or sheep in them. The boys were dragging and we kept them fed with sweets. Will's feet were hot. There was the occasional tree or hedge, but mostly it was ground blasted by livestock. The tributary of the Manifold, at the bottom of our circuit, flowing as it would into the richly-sung trout stream of Izaac Walton, looked and smelled suspiciously like the collective agricultural runoff of the area, and Will refused to dip his feet into it. (Perhaps it comes cleaner after disappearing into limestone further downstream, and then resurfacing.) Good birding however: lapwing, common buzzard, willow warbler, skylark, and something with a reedy, buzzy complex song that might have been a robin, but got away before we could identify it. The skylark shot from the ground and flew around and around us, rising, singing without stop. Skylarking.

Molly was unable to negotiate stiles, so I would lift thirty quivering pounds of whippet over each. The dog is all eagerness, but is not too smart about barbed wire. We saw a rabbit, and she was passionate about chasing it, but Aprille was firm. In one field we were challenged by some cows who seemed to have had too much coffee, but they ran off when Aprille and Molly turned directly towards them.

Although this area is packed with sheep, Aprille says their wool is thrown away. It brings less than it costs to shear it. Instead, these are lamb operations. Who's eating all this lamb?

Back at the cottage we rustled up some dinner and called it an early night. I read up on Arbor Low (a stone circle), how the Peak Park's romantic and desolate moor landscape of heather is in fact the wholly unnatural, engineered creation of generations of human effort; and a village called Chapel-en-le-Frith which is pronounced (yes, you guessed it) *chapel-en-le-frith*.