The English Man Who Went Up A Hill And Came Down A Mountain

(Except, there were two of us, and we’re both women)

“Everywhere is within walking distance if you have the time.” ~ Steve Wright

It’ll be good for us to get out for a quick walk, she said. We’ll just have a wander round the reservoir, she said. It’ll only be four miles, she said.

We ended up here.

Well, do you see a reservoir?

The ‘walk’ started off sedately enough. We parked up and went for a stroll along a nice, well-trodden, bridle-path, stopping every three minutes to take pictures of the pretty scenery.

This occupied us for about an hour or so, but, then we reached the point where the bridleway joined back on to the road. So we needed to choose a new path.

So we, reasonably enough, followed a sign saying ‘Public Footpath’.

Which in hindsight may have been an error.

And the first sign that this may have been the case came just five metres in, when, just after we’d confronted The Limbo Tree, we found ourselves edging along a rock face to avoid falling into the stream… I mean, violently surging river.

Proper public footpaths do, as a general rule, tend to have actual paths.

Then we had to climb quite a bit. Up a rocky trail, following in the footprints of some dog who appeared have been that way before.

And, somehow, instead of coming to the reservoir, we ended up on the moor.

A moor with a big fence across the middle. And instructions.

But we weren’t lost, because there was a sign…

We followed the arrow pointing upwards, since it was the only one that pointed in the direction of a passable way.

We thought if we carried on the short way up to the top of the hill we’d be able to see where we were and find our way.

Only, as we carried on, so did the hill. It kept growing.

Every time we though we were just getting to the top of it, another top appeared higher up and further away. It was though someone was watching us, and every time we were almost at the top of the peak, they dropped another bit in and laughed at us.

And then we lost the path entirely.

And yet, somehow, we weren’t particularly worried.

We eventually found another, proper, path, that looked as though it might lead us back to civilisation.

That ran along beside a snowy river.

We also found a thing.

And a touching, memorial bench.

And the Smiths didn’t have half bad taste in views.

But we really knew we were getting closer to where we wanted to be when we came across some horses.

And a farm-house.

And some sheep.

And we did eventually find the reservoir.

And the road back to the car.

These guys were beside it.

And set off home about five hours later than we’d originally planned.

Stopping on the way for a nice cup of tea. And a fantastic country pub lunch of pork, mashed potato, and vegetables, inside a huge Yorkshire pudding, and covered in gravy. Followed by a banana split.

None of which I remembered to take pictures of, but then again, this post is probably quite long enough already.

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