Sunday, October 29, 2017

Hathersage Booths, Eyam, Stoney Middleton, Calver, Curbar, and Baslow

It's not been a good day for me - I lost my camera somewhere towards the end of the walk...so obviously there won't be any photographs featuring on today's update. Losing the camera isn't as bad news as it might have been though; I bought it secondhand a couple of years ago and recently have been having problems with it - I think damp has got into the electronics because several of the camera's functions haven't been working properly, or even at all. I'm disappointed that I've lost today's images and the memory card though. Things could have been a lot worse; I might have lost my wallet, or my keys, or my mobile phone.

What I'm thinking is that I must have lost the camera when I reached a particularly difficult stile and decided to put it in a pocket. I would usually put it in one of the chest pockets of my anorak, but because of their poor design I must have used one of my trouser pockets...one that doesn't zip up, meaning that the camera will have fallen out when I lifted up my leg to climb over the stile.

My anorak is a good one; it would have been expensive to buy new, although I bought it for a couple of Pounds from a charity shop. It's made by Regatta, a reputable company. Having written that though, the design of the pockets is awful. The zips are in the wrong place and the pockets are facing the wrong direction. For me personally I need the zips to be in the centre and the pockets facing outwards, not the other way round. When I'm wearing practically anything else I'm easily able to zip and unzip the breast pockets and reach in with one hand and remove or put back in the camera...it only takes a few seconds...that's all. However, with this anorak  I needed two hands to perform this basic task, and my right shoulder is a bit stuff and sore and so when I had to reach, and stretch, over, up, across, and round whilst simultaneously tugging with the other hand to pull the material tight so that the zip would work I was suffering quite a bit of discomfort...and so stopped doing it.

I'm very disappointed with Regatta; I expected a lot better.

With the clocks going back to GMT in the early hours of this morning it meant that I had an extra hour to get ready. I didn't need it though; the only extra task I needed to do was to make sure I was wearing my watch which is set to the correct time zone; I can't cope with changing the time on a watch twice a year so I have two watches instead; one set to GMT for the winter season and the other set to BST for the summer months.

It was quite cloudy when I left home early this morning but by the time I'd stepped off the bus at the Millstone Inn the weather was glorious...and it stayed that way all day.

I walked down to the river, through woods and across meadows, stopping in several places to take photographs. I then reached the Grindleford road; something delicious was being cooked at the Leadmill Inn as I passed it before turning right and up the hill towards the hamlet of Leam. I was soon walking across Eyam Moor and after a few minutes stopped to eat my sandwiches at one of my favourite spots in the Peak District, with a wonderfully satisfying view of Hathersage, Stanage Edge, Millstone Edge, and the distant moors. Once I'd got up and started walking again I stopped a few times and turned to look behind me to continue enjoying the view and taking more photographs.

It wasn't long until I reached Eyam; both of the tearooms were busy and I wasn't prepared to queue so I headed straight for Mill Lane and then Stoney Middleton.

I didn't stay long at Stoney Middleton either; there isn't a cafe there. I located a footpath which was new to me and came out onto the road just north of Calver. The cafe at Calver seemed equally as busy as the tearooms in Eyam; in fact it's been quite a while since I've seen so many people walking in the Peak District.

Curbar is right next to Calver; I walked up through the village and found my next footpath merely by chance - I hadn't studied the map yet; I was planning to use a path further up the hill. Half of the route from Curbar to Baslow I hadn't walked along before, but this path eventually joined a more familiar alignment. On the approach to Baslow two large horses were standing and blocking the way at a gate - fortunately their owner was in the field and was able to help.

Everything went according to plan on my journey home until I was walking down my street and reached into my pocket for the house keys and then realised that I couldn't find my camera.


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