Daylight, sunshine and warmth, was this our last venture into the heart of Dark Peak before the torchlit winter? The imminent clock change to winter time prompted us to agree to an early 3pm start from King’s Tree using another of Andy’s routes, As ever, challenging, despite the lure of a grassy sward on the climb to the path between Bull Stones and Rocking/Crow Stones, The sprightly young Slow Warts, Tim and Roger lead the way to the boggy edge path and to the Canadian (?) plane wreck where, as normal, our group of seven split to regroup at Crow Stones/Rocking Stone. There, Tim made the effort to search for the ever-missing whisky bottle. It has become a routine practice which despite repeated failures is optimistically checked again in the hope of tasting this well-aged liquor.
We now had a panoramic view of the intended expedition which was slowly becoming a classic. Horse Stone was clearly silhouetted across Stainery Clough which we decided not to cross, too much climbing (we might save that for another day). So, pragmatically, we contoured round on an intermittent path which was probably continuous except we kept losing it.
However, we did reach Horse Stone which, yet again gave us a view of the challenges awaiting us over rough ground (did we ever not go over rough ground?), the norm for almost all the remaining outing. A steep descent down the heather covered rocks (nice) with a few tussocky swamps to relieve the boredom and, for a finale, a steep descent into the Derwent, crossing a major easy-going track, tempting but ignored.
An audience of the sprightly ones who had already crossed the river waited for any fallers to ghoulishly entertain them. There was only one who, understandably, gracefully slid on the submerged and very greasy rocks into the refreshing waters. Pete was then inspired to speed on up the hillside. Despite the extensively bracken covered hillside, the climb out of the valley was on a clear path through it, almost enjoyable. However, there was no more fun. Emerging from the bracken, apparently clear areas were ahead, but they weren’t. Some were, small areas but the rest were the usual, deep heather, tussocks and deep holes. We continued uphill, unsurprisingly not running across what seemed like interminable, going from false summit to false summit before joining the sprights at one of them. Meanwhile, Andy was strategically striking off to the left to avoid some of the climbing aiming to reach the ruined wall in Linch Clough.
We continued and were relieved to reach the trace of a path on the edge of Linch Clough where we just beat sunset thus avoiding the use of torches. A splendid and hard outing, thanks, Andy for suggesting the route though I suspect some of us may have gently cursed you (in a friendly way) as we disappeared down a heather covered deep hole, again!
We are now regulars at the YBI, we’re known and we’re always made welcome with a table saved for us, we have status! The talk was of apples, trampolines, head injuries, frozen road kill……..and more important topics.
All in all, a superb challenging evening, the last of summer?
Thanks to all.
Graham
