Walk around Lathkill Dale and Youlgrave

It's been a while since we last went out for a walk. In fact the last walk was with Neil and Caroline about a week before we went to Majorca. We arranged to go for another walk with them today.



Neil picked the walk. It was around Lathkill Dale and Youlgrave near Bakewell. We got up fairly early and made a nice cooked breakfast and then Amanda made our lunches for the walk. She made pita breads stuffed with coronation chicken, a recipe we got off Caroline. It's very nice and not as evil/fattening as normal coronation chicken.

We drove over to their house for 10am, loaded all the equipment into Neils car and set off. We got to the start of the walk, got ready and set off about 11am. The weather today was quite nice. It was warm, yet not to warm. There was also a breeze which made the walk more comfortable as there is a LOT of 'up' on this walk.

About a quarter of the way around the walk there are a load of very steep stone steps going up a hill. Before we tackled these steps we decided to stop for lunch so we had some energy to make it up the steps. Good job we did, they were very steep and I was knackered at the top.

There were lots of nice views on this walk. The camera got a decent amount of action. Good job too as our current camera is being retired this week to make was for the new Canon A650 :-). I can't wait to try it out. The image quality of the new camera should be very good.

When we were walking through the fields there was quite a breeze building up. Well it felt more like a gale, but we were quite high up.

According to Neils GPS unit the total walk length was 8.6 miles. Not bad really. We never intended to do a walk that long to start with, but the original walk we planned has an extension which takes you through Youlgrave, so we decided to do that.

Youlgrave is a very pretty little village, just the sort of place I could imagine myself living. There isn't too much there, a church, load of pubs (the important bit), grocers, post office and a butchers. All that you need. No stinking great big supermarkets. But don't get me on the subject of supermarkets as Tesco are trying to build a large one in Belper (where we live) and no one wants it there. Boo go away Tesco!!!

We finished the walk around 3pm. The end of the walk has a large hill which you have to climb. The hill was horrible. Not the sort of thing you want to do after 8 miles of walking. We were all completely knackered. Good job I can just sleep at my desk at work tomorrow (not really if any colleagues are reading this).

Neil drove back to Belper, but just his luck he kept on getting stuck behind some incredibly slow Sunday drivers. They needed to get back so they could go to the cinema which they had booked.

When Me and Amanda got home we started dinner. We were both starving, but we are now nice and full and will veg out in front of the TV. We have a lot of walks planned for next week. We have booked Thursday and Friday off work for our wedding anniversary and my birthday. Amanda has booked a pub/hotel in Castleton where we are going to stay on Thursday night.

During the day on Thursday and Friday we are going to do some walking. We will have Saturday off to recover and then will go out again with Neil and Caroline on Sunday. Should be good. I need the exercise to burn off the excess holiday weight :-)