I like the diving board photo there Trep
"Peacs and Troughs Tour" (with acknowledgments to Bearlegged, modified by Reg)
With some trepidation (and indeed Trepidation) I'd asked The Bikepacker Formerly Known As Landslide, and by association Trep, if they fancied a wobble round the White Peak, and they kindly allowed me to drag their normal pace down by about 90% which must have seemed like biking in treacle
. Seriously, it was great to ride with you guys, and hopefully all the cafes and pubs made up for the slothly speed.
We'd arranged to meet in Grindleford village, but as Trep mentioned, Bearlegged's train had turned out not to exist so he rode over the hill instead, and I toddled up to the station, bumping into him there, whence we proceeded to the cafe where Trep was pre-installed and enjoying a second breakfast.
The first job of course was to visit, er, another cafe. I was hoping to go for a record triple visit to the same one in a day, and this would be visit #2. Sadly, and to let you down gently now, the attempt was cruelly dashed later on when they closed early at 3.30pm.
Off we headed up the Eyam road past the "Closed" sign - what rebels eh? - and gradually grinded our way to the top whilst our eyes roved over the pleasant Derwent valley views. From here the cafe was all of two minutes away but why make it easy? We plunged off down a rocky track to Stoney Middleton to view the first water trough. I was aware there are quite a few in the area, throwbacks to lack of water in this limestoney landscape. This sign in the Roman well encouraged us, although paraphrasing Bearlegged, were we tomorrow now after yesterday, or were today before tomorrow and therefore too early?....
The second theme of the trip (well, the third after Peaks and Troughs) was Green Lanes, of which there is a proliferation around Eyam. We duly headed up the next one into Eyam, for the cafe stop. The cafe is situated on "The Square" but I noticed that this spot in Eyam is actually
three-sided, so what was going on here? Had one of the sides been confiscated since the original naming?
Free cafe blankets to keep us warm. Nobody expects.......
Just before we set off I spotted Trep's emergency rations on her bike. A persimmon fruit, now there's exotic!
Troughs number three and four followed in quick succession, and then it was off up the nasty hill in a completely pointless side loop which allowed us to enjoy three more green lanes.
At the top of the hill is Mompesson's Well, named after the rector who suggested the village cut themselves off during the Great Plague to stop the spread of the disease which had arrived with fleas in a consignment of cloth from London. Unimaginably, one third of the village contracted the disease and were lost within a few months. But they had contained the plague to the village and stopped its spread. A selfless and sobering lesson for our times perhaps.....
By this time the fog had started to envelope us, wrapping us up in its ghostly embrace.
We wound our way still further upwards, joining the track which continues Sir William Hill Road over the hill towards Bretton. The question is was the hill named after Sir William Hill, in which case surely it should be called Sir William Hill Hill Road, or was his surname actually William in which case it might be named correctly. Answers on a postcard. Hammering down the other side and swerving to the right down the track to Little Bretton took us past the Duric Well and its trough hidden in the grass. All this culture and history had made us thirsty and Bearlegged made the executive decision to pop in to the Barrel Inn for a quick one. An excellent idea. "Wright's 20 Minute Rule" very nearly overcame us but we managed to fight it and bailed out before our residence became terminal and ended up with us settling in for the night there and then.
The road along Eyam Edge was thick with fog, and as we rode we were confronted by a mass of bright lights ahead of us where no lights should be. A car? Far too many lights. A Close Encounter surely! Sadly it turned out to be a lorry parked up for a brew.
Bearlegged left Trep and myself floundering in the rocks, well me anyway, as he piled down yet another super-steep B.O.A.T. back down to Eyam, where, as already mentioned, my daring Triple Cafe Attempt was ground into the dust due to early closing.
Several more BOATS were lined up next but the prospect of dinner was elbowing its way into our consciousnesses, so we restricted ourselves to enjoying the gloop of Tideswell Lane, then up the road to Foolow. Appropropriately just round the corner from Foolow is the superbly named Silly Dale which was obviously compulsory viewing, so us Silly Fools took the bridleway along it, stopping on the way to test out Trep's new camera which played hard to get and almost caused Bearlegged to come back and check what silliness we were indulging in.
Anyway, the same as the last time I visited Silly Dale, things were remarkably un-silly - no sheep standing on their heads, or farmers showering us with silly string or party poppers over the wall as we rode past. I'm reasonably sure that Silly Dale also takes the crown as (one of) the shortest dale in the Peaks. From here we took a variety of lanes and back roads to reach our pub venue for the evening, where we met Mr Trep and had an extremely convivial time with plenty of ales, pies, burgers, and a fairly exceptional STP (sticky toffee pudding of course) adorned with a strawberry which I felt distracted somewhat from the quality of the underlying pudding but there we go. The landlady yet again recognised me, despite the last visit being a good three years ago, and she was confused that she now had
two crackpot Chris's to contend with. Despite this, she still gave us tacit village permission to access our bivvy spot, and off we headed into the murk full of good ale, food, and cheer. The conditions were advertised as fog and 0-2degC. Lovely!
I'd packed my DD Superlight tarp for a change, because even though previous visits had seen me bottling the outdoors and kipping in the cemetery shed, there were now three of us and the gentlemanly thing to do would be offer that to Trep. Rather patronising I know, given Trep's record of utterly mental bivvy spots, but I'm terribly old-fashioned like that
. I remember the shed only just being large enough for my svelte carcase, but this time it seemed to have taken on TARDIS-like features and all three of us managed to spread out with ease amongst the headstones, barrows, and stakes (presumably kept on standby for any vampires escaping outside in the night).
I like this photo, which admirably captures the wreckage and destitution of a typical BBB group indoor bivvy spot
. It was interesting to compare and contrast our various kipping kit, in my case a PHD Hispar 400 on an Exped Winterlite mat and a chunk of tyvek, comfortised with an Exped pillow pump. I rather liked the look of Bearlegged's S2S Aero pillow but not sure I can justify yet another head rest... or I can I.. hmm.....
The usual first breakfast of porridge and brews, and away again by a pleasant 8am. Standard shot of a BBB 22g under power...
More lanes and tracks, but no troughs, brought us to the Monsal Trail, and it's always a pleasure to coast gently downhill admiring the spectacular limestone scenery. In this case either the scenery is blurred, or I'm blurred, or the photo is blurred.
Cutesy Great Longstone sported another trough, although we had our suspicions that this was either transplanted from elsewhere or, worse, a genuine fake... or possibly a faked genuine... or...
Our final hill over Longstone Edge had a rather Highland flavour to it...
The long blast down across Peak Pasture and into Calver was a fitting end to our Peacs and Troughs Tour, and we rewarded ourselves with a stonking second breakfast at The Eating House, a new establishment for all of us despite it staring us all in the face for about the past 40 years. Unlimited coffee refills had Trep and Bearlegged in caffeine heaven, although I had to fork out for my second pot of tea - hah! I'm sure that's beveragist! Absolutely superb breakfast though. Eventually we had to drag ourselves away before too many extra coffees sent Trep and Bear into orbit, themselves over t'hill back to Steel City and me back to Grindleford and thence to pick daughter Perrin up.
It only remains for me to thank Trep and Bearlegged for indulging my hopelessly snail-like trampiness and providing such good company. I expect they had to ride home via Doncaster or somewhere to shake off such slothlike riding
.
12/12, 12/12, 71/71
'Reg'
. in both senses if the word. I especially like the first two and I'm trying to decide it the are B/E or Colour.
]
I found a good spot in Bucknell woods close to the route so decided to stop . 