I need a vacation from my holiday! I've spent every night of the last week looking at areas to visit, and places to stay. The first planned 6 weeks of my travels have been a real blessing; only the buses and trains to figure out in between. I gave myself one early night this week and turned in at 10 pm instead of midnight or 1 am. It seems I may finally have the last 2 weeks of my stay in the UK planned out, and almost all my reservations taken care of. Now just Europe to go! I've spent this evening trying to find my way around the European train system. Now I have some helpful resources to show for it, but I'm rather apprehensive at the thought of finding my way around them when I'm no longer in an English speaking country, especially further south.
I have some catching up to due now with my blog! I left you with grand manors and gardens to dream about. Beatrix Potter's home, and Levens Hall were in the Lake District, but Chatsworth was a bit farther south in the Peak District (perhaps more appropriate would be the "Hill District") where I stayed for 3 nights.
Considering that there is nothing very tall at all in the Peak District the views over the small village where I stayed were rather impressive with just a short climb to the old well. While I stayed here I learned about "Well Dressings". Originally an entirely religious ceremony they have now become more about raising money, though still related to the church if I remember correctly. My host and I sat in on an evening practice for the small group of local women who will be performing a short collection of dances for the weekend festival. The theme for this year's well dressing is "from around the world". The practice we sat in on was for rehearsing steps to go with the famous "Singing in the rain" song. The early well dressings were simply annual blessings of a village's well for the water it provided. Now many villages have taken up the tradition though, and each one has its own designated weekend for it's festivities sometime between May and September. I missed the one in Taddington where I stayed by about 2 days, but instead one of my hosts took me to see one in a neighboring village. The main project for the weekend fesitval is creating a smooth clay backing to fit inside a large wooden frame (3ft by 4ft?). On top of the clay flower petals, leaves, or perhaps wool and other natural materials are laid to create a scene, rather like the streets covered in flowers in India, but on a smaller, though by no means unimpressive scale. These works of art only last for a week or two before they are taken down. (As I'm writing I'm thinking "darn!" the photos are on my camera, which I can't connect here.) At any rate the well dressing we went to see had 2 biblical scenes (remember it is still religious), but on the boarders it depicted the Pennine Way, which begins in the Peak District and finishes 268 miles north just over the boarder in Scotland. This long distance walking trail is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. The well dressings were simplistic when it came to things like faces, but so beautiful and intricate when you walked up and realized they were all from flower petals.
On my second day (after I recovered from the tour of Chatsworth) my host dropped me at the head of what I consider a long distance walk: 20 miles. We spent probably an hour that morning pouring over the map and going over which path I was to follow. The plan was to meet me 7 hours later at the end of it. I had my doubts from the beginning that I could make it in that time as it seemed I was always much longer than expected on my previous walks in Scotland. Anyway off I went with my map, food, water, and phone. I then proceeded to spend about 1.5 hours searching for the "footbridge" over the stream in the bushes at the bottom of a farmer's field. In the end I knew I had to be in the right place (after backtracking a few fields) and just bushwhacked my way across. I did indeed find the footbridge as I made my way along the other side, and I've included a photo to perhaps capture the reality of how detailed my map was! (All of my new photos are actually from my walk.) After getting off to such a great start I did succeed in staying perfectly on the path for the next 7 hours. I ended up postponing my pick up time by an hour and still didn't make it all the way to the end, so I guess I spent an incredible amount of time checking my invaluable map, or I just walk extremely slowly! The path did become easier (better marked) as I went along. At one point I descended through a valley of ferns and came almost without noticing upon a walking group of about 20 coming up the other direction. The ferns over here can range in height from perhaps 2ft. to probably 6ft. So when you look at a hill and think "Oh I could just walk up there any way I want" think again when you realize the nice green is actually several foot tall ferns (or bracken; I have a hard time telling the difference).
I stopped for a snack on the shortest walled bridge I've ever seen called Pack horse bridge I believe. The idea behind it was that ponies, or donkeys laden down with sacks could cross it without the edges of the sacks scrapping against the sides of the narrow stone bridge.
Another enjoyable stopping place was on top of Pillsbury Castle Hills, the hilly remains of a small fort from roughly the time of William the Conqueror (1066). (It really puts time into prospective!) What a lovely view I had over the valley and fields of sheep I'd passed though.
We all finished up the evening with a very nice meal at an Inn. I had their spinach and ricotta raviolis and garlic bread, while my hosts had more typical meat pies.
There is the saying that all things heal with time, but I don't really blieve that's true. With time we simply lose some of the rawness. My hosts in the Peak District lost their middle child, a son, not quite 2 years ago. He was climbing solo in the Andes and never came back. Not knowing what happened was the worst part. So this little note is some sort of recognition of their loss, which was always obvious.
I think I am one of the minority who stop at some of the small monuments here for those people who never came back from WW1 and WW2 and feel some of the enormity and grief of it in the list of names.
