The Peak District

At long last, the tale of Grace and I's trip to the Peak District last weekend. There's great photos but since I lost the camera cord, you can't see them yet. I divided the post up into parts for your enjoyment.

I. An Introduction to the Peak District

What is the Peak District, you ask? It's a national park full of big big hills (but not mountains - but they were 400 vertical meters from the valley floor). Named for the ancient tribes who previously lived there (not for the peaks of the . . . hills), it is the second most visited national park in the world, according to my guidebook. Fortunately Grace and I were going in January, which is not the peak season (ha ha ha!). It's sort of in the middle of Great Britain. Farthest North we've been in the UK thusfar.

II. Whereupon Matt and Grace Journey to their Hostel in the Peak District

Friday morning I packed up while Grace got herself a root canal. I had a topographical map in a plastic bag, a compass, an emergency headlamp that I bought the day before (in case we were stranded in the night), gaiters (waterproof things that go over your shoes and cover your shins), a first aid kit and a guide to hill walking. Plus some food and an ipod and clothes.

We left from Cambridge train station around three o'clock and went up to Peterborough (50 minutes). When they came to check out tickets we realized Grace had forgotten her "Young Persons Railcard," which lets us travel for a cheaper rate. But they didn't ask to see it, so we were in the clear. At Peterborough we switched trains for one bound for Doncaster. The first train to come through was totally full and they wouldn't let anyone on board. The second we got on, but we had to stand. It was about 70 minutes to Doncaster. There we switched again and caught a train to Sheffield (30 minutes?). At Sheffield we had some time to kill before our final train, a little one out to the village of Edale. At the station I called our hostel and asked if there was going to be someone there to pick us up at the train station (when I booked the hostel they had said there might be).

Not tonight though. We were advised to walk - through the car park, go left, then right at a crossroads, then a half hour along the road. Eventually we would see a white sign for the drive up to the hostel. It was a good thing we called when we did, because once the train entered the Peak district there was no cell phone reception.

Around 7:15 we departed on a little train, just two cars. Several stops later we were in Edale.

It was night, and lightly raining and we were deep in the countryside so there were no lights up. It was really, really dark. Right off the bat we couldn't find the car park which we were supposed to go through. The train station was just a concrete platform and a little shelter. We followed a path down the road, but there was nothing ahead or behind us to indicate the existence of a parking lot so we went back to the train station. We found a sign pointing to the car park, but couldn't actually find the park. Everyone was parting ways and we decided to follow a big family (how many hostels could there possibly be out here?).

We had to pull out the emergency head light almost instantly and Grace wore it. The family turned off the road into some other hostel so now we were on our own. We pulled out the map and the compass and plotted a course to the hostel that involved going left then right at a crossroads, as we had been instructed.

In the dark we could only really see as far as the light went, which was about 25 feet. It was a strange sense of both open space and being really closed in, since we were unable to get any wider sense of where we were and where the roads were going. Well, we turned right at the crossroads and we were on muddy wheel tracks rather than a proper road. This quickly turned into a wet, muddy footpath through fields. But we did know where we were. The map was correct about the placement of fences, and we passed a farm on schedule. Eventually we got into a tiny village, really just a clusture of inns around a farm. Our course passed through that though and we were back in farm fields. We saw signs warning that there were bulls in the field, but we didn't see anything.

At this point I was having a lot of trouble keeping on my feet. Grace had the light and so I was feeling things out with my feet but the ground was a mix of really slick grass and mud. Before long I had fallen and caught myself with my hands, though they landed in mud and were filthy from then on.

And we had a small problem. We were supposed to catch a path that veered to the right, but we weren't seeing it. We saw a set of muddy wheel tracks that went off to the right but since the light only went 25 feet we weren't sure they were actually a path, or just the farmer's tractor marks. We investigated and I tried to avoid walking in the mud tracks, so I walked along the grass instead. But this was up a hill and when I turned around my feet went out from under me and I landed on my hands and butt and legs in the mud. The map also went flying off into the night.

The map got snagged on a fence though so we were allright. And Grace's lighted investigation of the wheel tracks revealed they just went in a circle. And I was coated in mud now, and this was my only pair of pants. We took a close look at the map and turned off the path onto a gravel road that connected with the main road through the valley. We followed that road (realizing later that this is what we had been meant to do - we would have gone this way if we had found the car park) and stumbled up to the hostel after an hour in the darkness.

No eyebrows were raised about me being covered mud. It's probably pretty normal in the Peak District. We checked in and I did laundry (1 pair of jeans).

That night we pulled out the enormous map and plotted an ambitious route for the next day. Most long walks we take are 8-10 miles, but we usually have to bike or take a bus somewhere first. Since we would be starting and finishing at the hostel I aimed for 12-15 miles, with several hundred vertical meters of travel thrown in for good measure. We would go across the fields we tried to negotiate at night and follow a river up to the top of a really big hill. We would walk along the top of the hill for a few miles (it was more like a hill-range), descend into the valley, follow a roman road to the other side of the valley and summit two big hills on the other side before heading back in for the night. A little too ambitious, it turned out.

III. Whereupon Grace and Matt realize they are not as good at Hill-walking as Matt thought

We left on our walk around 10 the next day after a hearty breakfast at the hostel dining room. Cutting across the fields I fell again and got my leather gloves filthy with mud. Why would I wear leather gloves?! It was stupid (plus, I'm a vegetarian!).

The walk was really good at the beginning. The landscape was much more dramatic than Cambridgeshire, which is sort of peaceful and idyllic. Here we were surrounded by a landscape that dwarfed us. We passed through farmers' fields full of grazing sheep (walking is so historic in the UK that you can cut through private property as long as you stay on the legal path). We went into a quaint village and over delightful little stone bridges.

Already I could tell we were not as extreme as the other people here. Everyone else had walking poles and waterproof pants, plus much bigger camping backpacks. And we were passed by everyone (we only passed one group all weekend and they were sitting down to eat after having passed us earlier).

Things got considerably harsher and less quaint. Going up the hill the path changed from a stone path to a dirt path to picking our way through rocks next to the stream. We had to spend a lot of time figuring out where to put our feet next. We had to use our hands more and more. The wind started to roar and the fine misty rain came in and out. Grey clouds moved fast over the top of the hills.

After about an hour and a half we had walked a few kilometers and gained perhaps 120 meters. We stopped to rest and eat before tackling the final section of the hill which went 80 meters up over, perhaps 250 meters. We used our hands all the time now to lean forward and crawl up the rocks which now dominated the terrain. The higher we got though, the better the view and there was no civilization in sight now, just this dramatic landscape of dark muted greens and browns.

We reached the top and a trio of people in skin tight athletic clothes scrambled up after us. Once they were on the top of the hill they took off running. They looked like the joggers you see in Iowa City, but they were out in this dramatic landscape that I had brought a first aid kit, map and compass for. For them this was just a little weekend exercise or something.

Anyway we had quite good views from up here and we walked off on a path following the edge of the hill. We stopped once to look at some big boulders that I thought looked like they were some kind of stone-henge-ish thing. Anyway, I started to get a little worried up here. It was coming on 1 o'clock and the sun sets around 4:30 in the UK winter. We should have been over halfway done by now and we were not even a fourth of the way through. On top of that I got a little spooked when I couldn't find a path that should have joined us at our right and then a fence appeared which wasn't on the map. It was obvious now we wouldn't get the whole route done today but I was worried we would be able to do the first half of it. It was a long way to the end of this hill top and then we would have to descend and get back to the hostel. I thought we would be hard-pressed to finish by nightfall.

And it was really windy and cold on top the hill (it was January, after all). And we kept getting passed by people. And then, coming the other way was a family of people who had brought their little dog with them. They had no gear, they were wearing tennis shoes and for them this was like a walk in the woods.

So we arrived at a juncture. It was 1:45 and we could take a side path straight down the hill and back to the hostel, or we could shoot for the other end of the hill and and walk back around the valley. There weren't any paths in between the two ways. We erred on the side of caution and came down the quick path.

I fell in those muddy fields a few more times, again landing on my butt. We realized my old hiking boots had a nice smooth sole from four years of use. No treads for me.

When we got back an hour later Grace took a nap and I hung out reading. We ate at the Hostel again (not wanting to walk the half hour to the nearest pub) and hung out in the lounge reading and playing boggle over some Hoegarden beer. Went to bed early so we could get one more walk in before we left.

IV. Wherein Grace and Matt have a generally pleasant walk

The next day we set our sights much more humbly. We would do one of the two hills we were going to summit yesterday and take the 2:50 train out of the Peak district. Grace was pretty tired but we made good time this time. The winds today were even stronger than they had been the day before though. There was a particularly frightening part where we walked along the edge of ridge and up a natural stone staircase. The wind was so powerful that we had to keep low and pause to brace against the gusts. The top was a great view, but windier than all get out. The descent was on the slick grass and mud I had grown to hate, but there were just enough rocks in the landscape for me to stay generally upright even with the harrowing wind. I did fall at one point, but only planted one of my knees in the mud.

After the hill the rest of the walk was really nice through English countryside and farms. There was a little dog that barked at us a lot and we illegally slogged through a muddy field to take a shortcut to a quicker path. We sank to our ankles in that mud.

Anyway, except for the fact that Grace had to use the bathroom for the last two hours of the walk, it was a good way to finish off the day. It was much sunnier too, and didn't rain at all.

V. Whereupon Grace and Matt's trip home is some kind of Joke

Once again the mini-bus to the train station was a no go so Grace and I walked there (this time on the road - no more muddy fields for me). We showed up a few minutes before the train left and got on to the platform. There was a train on the other-side and Grace warned me that the kids in the other train were tapping on the glass to get our attention, so I should ignore them. The tapping didn't stop and they opened the windows to yell at us - "That track is broken! This is the train!"

We hurried over to the other platform and dashed onto the train with minutes till the train was due to depart.

But we were sitting there in the station for twenty minutes before an announcement came on: "We apologize for the delay. We're just waiting for the driver. We should depart in 20 minutes."

After a half hour there wasn't a second announcement: "We apologize for the delay again. We are just waiting on the driver and we've been in contact with control. We should be departing within 10 minutes."

That was the last announcement we heard before 4:30 (after we had been on the train 100 minutes past it's scheduled departure). At 4:30 they apologized again and told us this train was going to become the 4:50 train, and the 2:50 service was cancelled.

At 4:55 we left (no explanation for the driver's absence). It was night by then, and our hope of a nice train ride through the Peak district was spoiled by night. Also we had missed the train we wanted by an hour or two in Sheffield. So, instead we had to take a train to Doncaster were we could switch for Cambridge. I figured we would be in by nine or so.

Anyway, on the train to Doncaster the coach master came around to check our tickets. We gave him ours and he asked to see our Young Person's Railcard. As you may recall, Grace had forgotten hers. We told him and I showed him mine. It turned out that I didn't have mine either - what I thought was the young persons railcard was actually just a photo ID they issued with it (stupid system). So we were travelling illegally.

The kindly guy just wrote on our tickets that we were invalid so we wouldn't be able to go further without fixing things up in Doncaster. This was instead of charging us each £50 each, so that was nice I guess.

At Doncaster we had to upgrade our tickets to pay the non-discounted rate (£17 each). There was no way to get a better price without our cards present. And we had to take a totally garbage route home. She wrote it out for us because it was prety complicated.

Train from Doncaster to Newark.
Bus from Newark to Grantham.
Train from Grantham to Peterborough.
Different train from Peterborough to Ely.
Different train from Ely to Cambridge.

We would get in at 11:30 or so. Each leg of the trip was under 40 minutes long. We just had so many lay-overs, the one at Peterborough over an hour in the cold.

Well, what can you say? For about an hour I was furious but eventually I was just tired. The bus from Newark to Grantham was ridiculous. The whole train had to get off and walk to the end of the platform, down a ramp, across the tracks, and wait in a big crowd (a lot of the crowd stuck on the tracks - ha ha for them!). Anyway they crammed us onto this bus with 70 seats - three on one side, two on the other. The seats were too narrow for me, and I'm not exactly a wide guy. I had this foreign couple next to me (about six inches from my face, but across the aisle still) and they were having a really loud argument in French (I recognized some words - thanks Basic French 1!). At one point the man punched his the palm of his hand really loudly for some reason.

At Peterborough Grace bought some crisps (or, Chips, in American) and some crazy drugged out woman walked over to her and stuck her hand out and in a childlike, loopy voice asked, "Can I have crisp please?" Grace gave her one and she walked off, but not before stopping and ecstatically shrieking while shuddering. Grace was interested in the crisps after that ("they probably have traces of opiates now" she said), but eventually she got hungry again and ate them anyway.

Also, they cancelled our train from Peterborough to Ely which was quite a surprise. It was on the board, but it wouldn't list the platform and I went looking for it. Eventually I found out it was cancelled and when I came back it shortly disappeared from the board.

Fortunately a half hour later a train straight to Cambridge showed up. We jumped on board and took a taxi home where we quickly went to bed.

The end.