I made a slight error in judgement during a visit to my sister's last weekend. As we were leaving, I called to my nephew to give his auntie a goodbye kiss, forgetting that my sister had informed me earlier that they were getting over colds and it was too late to back out by the time his snotty little face and plastered itself all over mine. Nice. Not. Bleugh. Needless to say, three days later I started with a sore throat, the voice went completely over the weekend and now it is coming back but I still sound like Janet Ellis.
On Saturday, we decided that some fresh air was needed and headed out on to the hills not too far from here, following the Pennine Way across the M62 at Windy Hill bridge (by the big aerial on the tops by Jcn22 if anyone knows the area) up to the Aiggen Stone,
round the reservoirs overlooking Todmorden and back. It was a lovely day (although there were some ominous looking clouds further north for a while) although slightly spoiled by having to walk the last hour or so in almost agony because of stupid blisters on my stupid feet. Managed to put some tape on them before they caused any real damage, but it was really really slow and uncomfortable hobble back to the car. Today's Lesson: put the tape on BEFORE your feet start hurting.
Some sheep, because it's been a while.
We were very lucky with the weather over the weekend, it is very unusual for Manchester to seem to have the best of it. And the day was rounded off by a spectacular sunset.
On Saturday we drove over to Bakewell to meet up with my Dad and step-Mum who had brought their caravan up to the Peaks for a few days.
We got a guidebook of walks in the area from the tourist information office and set off for a nice three mile walk up to the Nine Ladies Stones, the four of us and dogs Holly and Ben. There were some interesting things along the way, such as a protest camp / squat in the woods where the council want to reopen a quarry, they had rope ladders, rope bridges and everything. We didn't see any eco-warriors, but they could have been hiding out in their amazing (but rather unsafe) looking tree houses. Also encountered on the way were some rather anxious cows, one of whom took an obvious dislike to Holly and Ben, thankfully there was enough room around the edge of the field for us to skirt around and there was a fence which looked easily climbable in the event of an emergency.
After a couple of hours of walking, it became obvious that the walk wasn't three miles long - it was actually 5,2 miles and quite hilly - but everyone coped and later, over a nice cup of tea, declared it had been a good outing although I thought the Nine Ladies were a bit of an anti-climax - Avebury and Castlerigg it is not... I didn't take a picture of the stones as there were lots of people sitting on them.
