We’re out the door at the crack of 9:30am, peanut butter still stuck to my teeth (Di had yogurt, which doesn’t really stick to your teeth), excited to hit the road and see more of this rolling, verdant land. Our journey today takes us south beyond the hamlet of Thorpe to a popular walk trail, “Dovedale steps”. The morning is cloaked in a heavy fog so that the fields and hedged side roads fade off mysteriously to places unknown. Even as we draw into Thorpe the fog is starting to burn off, patches of blue appearing in the grey above.
Even in winter, there are thirty cars in the car park, and there’s a coffee van in full swing, strategically located at the walk’s entrance.
Crunching up the gravel path by the river, the sun is punching through with vigour and we’re not far up the hill, ‘Thorpes Cloud’, before we’ve doffed the first couple of layers. The last few days of sun have dried the silty alluvial soil, providing good purchase for our boots, however it’s still pockmarked from thousands of our gumbooted brethren on damper days (and a fair number of sheep), and the steep unevenness is playing havoc with Di’s balance. It happens sometimes for Di, somewhat like I get motion sickness skiing in whiteouts, that her balance is thrown with uneven surfaces. No nausea, Di says it’s like walking on waves or a mushy changing surface, destroying all proprioception. Once it’s hooked in, it takes sitting down or long tracts of solid, steady surfaces to settle things down again. We steady our pace and soak up the stunning morning.
The path eventually opens up to a road-width grassy byway, and we drop down into the valley behind Thorpes Cloud, the sun warm on our backs. The ‘Thorpe’ rises steeply up to 287m on our left as we round her conical, limestone-white-topped green. To our right, sheep graze and a long since collapsed limestone lichen-splotched stone wall, shored up with a post and wire fence, and interspersed with ancient gnarly thorn trees with small red berries, guides our path down the hill.
A woodpecker can be heard in the distance, and birds of prey circle the distant peak. I think I cried. The path down the dale follows the river now, flowing swiftly after all the rain. The first tentative blossoms of spring splash the steep wooded valley with dashes of pure white. There are shit loads of ducks, and we’re graced by the presence of a large crane or stork, fishing on the banks.
This path continues undulating along the river, on to Milldale, and we’ll meet it again once we’ve hiked up towards Tissington Hill and along the Dale tops above.
It’s a steep climb up, and we need our wind jackets once out of the valley. The track follows the contour below a stone wall marking the boundary of the farm on the ridge above us. A farmer way up on Tissington Hill, loads out hay from his quad, and sheep come running and bleating from all over the range.
Up here, we’re above the ash forest in the valley, and a stone manor can be seen across the valley. Eventually, we work our way to the end of the ridge and back down once again into the valley and onto the well-manicured path to Milldale. There are caves and large stalactite-like rock formations. Most of the trees are deciduous (ash), but there are conifers too, holly trees, some kind of willow and the blossoming hawthorn and cherry trees.
Back at the base of Thorpe Cloud, the Dovedale steps enable hikers to ford the stream. After much rain, their normally high dry tops are wet, some with a few inches of water flowing over them, and one is dislodged so that it’s out of line and sloping gradually downstream. The National Trust site says the steps are closed, and the coffee man said to ‘go around’ but, people, being people, are giving it a crack.
Assembled observers were confident, no doubt, that these two ladies lumo sprint runners ‘pounded-the-pavement’ only in so much as gravity commanded it so. They were built for comfort, not for speed. The first lady takes the lead with a very solid British bulldog leashed behind, expecting, evidently, that said animal will hop delicately from stone to stone behind her. For balance, she carries another small, fluffy dog-type-creature under her other arm. The second lady takes up behind. The first couple of stones are passed without misadventure, and the two reach the dislodged stone. During numerous tentative attempts to step onto its awkward wet slope, the bulldog wraps its lead around mum’s legs and then decides to leap, landing full in the river. Mum now stands bent over like a pocket knife, both legs bound by a leash, holding a cement-bag-weight dog by the collar over a rapid (with a furry, trembling, pop-eyed animal squashed under her ‘free’ armpit). It was entertaining viewing for all, and I confess, somewhat disappointingly, we can report that both somehow managed to ford the crossing unscathed. There were other punters equally as fun to watch, but all were humbled by the elderly Chinese lady who strolled out easily with her son, just for a photo, before strolling back. We also made our crossing successfully, Di in boots, I in barefeet, before heading to the Old Dog at Thorpe for a beer. The pub is four hundred years old, an old coach inn. Just saying.
We drive home via Tissington, an estate village built around Tissington Hall. Everything’s labelled; barn, mill, hall, kindergarten etc., and it feels a bit touristy, but it’s really quite beautiful in the late afternoon light. Owned and occupied by Sir Richard Fitzherbert and his wife, the hall is rented for weddings and functions, but on the estate, you can also do pilates or get your nails done, which seems strange amongst all the wood and stone. We walk past a cottage under renovation with an inner besa block wall and an outer stone wall facade and get a sense of just how much work would be involved in maintaining one of these places.
The other night at the Bridge Inn, our local, we witnessed a stocky bloke with short cropped beard and purple-died beard plaits, grungy work trousers and nepalise yak herder jacket discussing under his breath to a younger slim man, face shodwed in a black hoodie, something of gravity on his phone. The collective effect seemed a little unsavoury. Later, when I went for a beer I peered over and noticed they were discussing LEGO figures!
It’s late after the walk today, the bar is closed, and only I, purple plaited LEGO man, the barmaid and the manager remain (Di has gone to bed). The manager has closed off all the kegs but lined up three pints each for LEGO man and the barmaid. LEGO man’s a collector. He buys bags of random LEGO off Amazon, sorts it all, gives the dodgy LEGO (it’s the wrong colour) to schools and hopes to find rare pieces from which he assembles kits. He has a whole room full of sorted pieces and assembled LEGO models. He laments, tongue in cheek, how he’ll write the LEGO Death Star off on tax, given he’s a gardener.
The Barmaid, a self-proclaimed ADHD sufferer and classic over-sharer, fills the empty bar with sound. In her early twenties (She’s now twenty-seven), she worked in Africa doing the ‘entitled-white-person-building-toilets-for-the-poor’ thing, where she met her Zimbabwian ex. The first red flag, she said, was when he left (because she didn’t want children), but returned later because the sex was good. But also, he was fifty and had no legs. She agreed that she needed to pay more attention to flags, but you know, being a snake’s namesake and being born in the year of the snake, it was difficult. During the day, she made fake finger nails and sold them at market stalls and, in particular, at the annual Peaks District Pagan and Heathen Festival (it’s a thing). I’m being a little unfair. She was actually a factopedia and very helpful re things-to-do in the Lakes District (good crystal shop apparently).
The barman, I should say, had expected us in and put aside the last gluten-free sausages. As soon as we walked in, he looked at me and said ‘Speckled Hen’ (GF Beer)? He made everyone feel like a local.
Driving to the lakes, we navigated so as to avoid Manchester and Sheffield, basically heading NNW past Ladybower reservoir and through the country backroads. Di wanted to stop at a town called Wigtwizzle because, well, why wouldn’t you, but it turns out that Wigtwizzle was a fizzle, nothing there, so we stopped at Ye Olde Mustard Pot at Midhopestones for the best steak pie and (GF) Yorksheer pudding ever. We arrived at Ambleside to see the distant fells catch the last glow of the setting sun, glorious. Although there was one tense moment when Di was doing her darndest to navigate us ever closer toward our next abode (what’s that mathematical progression when smaller and smaller amounts keep adding towards a finte limit but never reach it?), down steep, narrow lanes in the dark with three pages of useless instructions, whilst I repeated helpfully through gritted teeth, ‘so where now, honey?’ a bladder bursting sweat beading down my forehead. Zeno would have struggled, but Di got us there in the end.
Today we’ve enjoyed sunshine in the Lakes! The place is swollen with weekend crowds all in puffer jackets and beanies. In the evening, the pubs are filled with jubilant conversations, walkers and climbers back from the vigours of the day. The rough stone, slate-roofed inns nestled down narrow lanes, warm fires burning within, distant mountains still glowing gold in the evening, remind us both so much of some ski village in Austria or Italy.
Our stories (at the Golden Rule – the only place we can find a seat) are of our weekly shop at Tescos this morning (where we inadvertantly take a ‘short-cut’ home up two waterfalls, across two bridges and back again) and the walk through the church and down along the River Rothay to Lake Windermere, where we happen upon the ruins of the old 4th-century Roman fort right on the banks of the lake. We plan for tomorrow – a boat trip on Derwent waters. Happy days.