Do you have a coat? Are you wearing trousers?

We had a few goals for this term break (all 24 days of it) and by the last week, we had accomplished next to none of them. The weather kept interfering, or our schedules, or any such excuse. One of my goals to which the girls had agreed was to go hiking here in England. So, Snowy Sunday we declared that unless it was actually pouring rain, we were going to get into the car and drive a few hours to some acceptable hiking location and not come back until we were sufficiently sore, tired, and blistered.

Monday we awoke to another dusting of snow, but the weather girl promised that the sun was going to come out for a mostly dry and cold day. I found a very lovely but long hike, and though the girls have never been on a hike of more than about 5 miles, when they saw that there were caves, they agreed. We scrambled to get everything together, including maps and food. Lena came down dressed in yoga pants, and I sent her back upstairs to change, specifically into something warmer. Those were almost my exact words for why she needed to change. Morning was wasting, and the girls with the food all packed went to wait in the car for me. The snow-covered car. I finally came out, dusted off the car, tossed the two layers of my winter jackets on the seat next to me, and we were off.

An hour up the road, 30 miles from the trail head, I pulled off of the Motorway to refuel and as I crested the hill of the exit, I could see ominous dark clouds in the direction we were heading. I commented over my shoulder excitedly that we might get to hike in the snow. There was a deep silence from the backseat until Livia spoke up, "I don't even have a sweater!" Turns out that the girls dressed and packed only exactly what I had mentioned to them. Lena had changed into warm pants, and they each had their thin waterproof jackets because I had told them to get them, but neither girl, while sitting for 5 minutes in the sub-freezing car under a blanket of snow had thought to bring a jacket. The flurries started while I pumped gas ($8.40 per gallon, so no whinging from you softy Americans), and I pondered if there was any way to salvage this trip. The service station sold beach chairs, 2-man tents, hard hats, and car-powered coolers, but no sweatshirts for the girls to wear under their rainjackets.
So we drove home.

Wednesday, we tried again. This time we packed 18 layers deep and somehow made it to Milldale, where we parked the car to begin our hike around Dovedale.
Dovedale is a lovely dale in the Peak District that is very popular with the tourists as it is a fairly flat 3 miles through the valley, so it tends to get crowded with yahoos. After passing a solitary twitcher, we did begin to encounter others along the trail.
Soon, the caves that convinced L&L to undertake this death march came into view.


As I said, this is a popular trail, and it isn't really a hike if it follows a flat, well-beaten path, so when we arrived at Ilam Rock, we turned onto the real trail -- that went straight up out of the valley (the path is the hardly noticeable dog-path that seems to climb up the side of Ilam Rock).

Halfway up we stopped for air and a bite of lunch when the trail cut sideways for about 10 yards. We were surrounded by gobs of wild garlic (all the green in the photo), and from our desperate hand-over-hand climb, we stunk in a sufficiently vampire-safe way.
We emerged from the trees, now at the top of the chasm which is Dovedale, having just climbed 115 meters (377 feet). We were tired, but happy for the view.

The top of the hills makes for great pasture, and we made the most of this being the lambing season by harassing as many sweet little lambs as possible.
Finally we arrived at the highest point, Bunster Hill, which is an ancient reef knoll -- a giant pile of calcium deposits back from the day when all of this was under water (which I'm guessing was last summer). We could see for miles and miles in every direction -- were it not for the fantastic haze. It felt like any minute we would just fall off the earth. L&L wanted to roll down and only abstained from fear of sheep poo, not because they would have rolled into the next county.

We hiked along the ridge line, heading toward the very prominent Thorpe Cloud (which as true blue Americans we had renamed Volcano Hill). Lena wanted to climb it too (though it is slightly shorter than Bunster Hill). But we hit a small snag in this plan as we hit the edge of this ridge...





Yep, it was almost straight down. An 85° decline seemed a little daunting to me, the voice of reason. But we still had to get down. Those tiny little people down there were walking on our route back to the car (on the far right, the nearly invisible dots are the people). We decided to take a longer, switchback route down, and before we set out, Livia stripped off her jacket, packed it into her bag, and then set the bag down -- from where it promptly started rolling down this hill. She went to chase after it (since of course she had also packed some of her non-outdoorsy treasures), and being the great mother that I am, I went sliding down the scree after it, finally stopping when I couldn't compete with gravity unless I surrendered to the gravity completely. The bag came to a rest on a little ledge, and I was able to retrieve it. Woohoo! Wouldn't want to lose any of those sparkly pencils Livia brought!
Near the bottom, we met up with lamp #2. A few weeks ago, I was in the car with a British lady, and there was a field near her home with many frolicking lambs, each with an individual number spray-painted on the side. I joked about picking out Sunday Dinner by number, and she replied that actually the lambs are owned and raised by the village butcher and last year she had #17, and he was delicious. Seriously.
There came a point in the trail when to proceed, we had to cross these stepping stones. Unfortunately, the first 4 were under fast-flowing water. Remember how I'm such a great mother? Yep, I carried each of my lead-bottomed children to the dry stones as they cried and wiggled in fear of falling in. Then, on the other side, they wanted to do it all over again. Of course. We saw a natural arch. Actually, this occurred at about Mile 6, so I wasn't paying attention and nearly walked right past it. Kudos to Livia for being observant enough to see giant limestone formations 30 yards from the trail.
When we were nearly back, I made the girls take a picture of me, just to prove that maybe I had been there. Between the two of them, they took about 10 pictures of which only this one was even slightly passable. To be fair, the camera kept doing funky things with the exposure for me too, so I can't put all the blame on the girls.

We had some really interesting conversations. #1: Lena is as deaf as a post. We had numerous times when I'd say something and she'd hear something totally different. Lena, "What are you eating?" Me,"Cough drop." Lena, "Pasta?" Then later I said we could go into the caves. She heard, "...go into the pigs." This became a running joke as there were about 7-8 caves during the course of the trip. #2: Lena refers to Snickers Bars as "Sneekers." This took a little getting used to. #3: We encountered a man fly-fishing. Livia promptly replied, "Why would anyone want to catch flies?"

We had a stunning time despite the lack of blue skies and the boot-full of stubbed toes from a rapid descent. The hike was a total of 7 miles. When we were near the end, I asked, "So, where do you want to go tomorrow?" Lena was raring to conquer something even bigger while Livia declared that she never wants to do this ever again. For the rest of her life.