Our Edale Trip

Well, having finished my Latin exam I now need to work on building up the amount of typing my arms can stand, from nil to, you know, thesis length. So I thought I'd write abou the trip Matthew & I took to Edale, in the Peak District.

We stayed in a Landmark Trust property - our first Landmark but not our last I'm sure! - Edale Mill. The Landmark Trust own lots of old buildings which they let out as holiday homes. The mill was lovely - except for the lack of soundproofing between floors, and we had amazing views out of every window. Of course, when I wanted to take photos to show off our amazing view the Peak District weather came into its own and there was thick fog (no, we didn't climb Kinder Scout).

It didn't rain that much. The first day we walked up one hill, along the ridge for a while, then down to Castleton on the other side. Then back home via a different part of the hillside. Unsurprisingly it did rain, but it soon cleared up (though I still can't get the mud off my Dr Martens). (The second day we mostly did jigsaws ;) )

The view was worth it all, but really, how can people complain about windfarms when this got planning permission (the factory/quarry/power station - not the tree)?



On the way back Matthew saw a jutting out rock, which he thought would be perfectly safe for us to picnic on. I didn't believe him, but let him have a sit down (top view, eh?):



As for the 'safeness' of this rock. Well, what do you think?!!!



I was quite disappointed, given the propensity of sheepsies everywhere, that there were no knitting shops in the area. All I could find was a gift shop that had a rack of acrylic novelty wool. Any hope I had of getting some Edale fleece with which to spin up some yarn for a memento was lost. I did manage to pull a couple of bits of fleece off a fence, but it's not really the same.

I wanted to keep these though!



We walked this!



And on the way home we went to the Chestnut Centre - an owl and otter sanctuary! It's actually relatively near Manchester (as is Edale - most of the comments in the Mill Log Book were along the lines of 'Walked up Kinder Scout on Monday, went to Trafford Centre on Tuesday'). We went first thing in the morning on our way back, in the pouring rain. Despite otters being aquatic creatures, they certainly took a lot of persuading to go out in the rain. We walked through the entire park, past empty otter enclosure after empty otter enclosure, feeling a bit disappointed. The owls were cute of course, though. However, when we walked back through all the otters were out:



There's also a deer park, so it would be nice to take a picnic on a sunny day.