Sunshine on Stanage Edge

It was with the impediment of the rapidly sinking sun in our eyes that we struck out, off the trodden path, across the tussocky, boggy flatland between Rud Hill and Stanage Edge.

Had the sun not been so low in the sky and shining directly into our eyes, we would have been able to see where we were going, and perhaps would have avoided quite so many above-ankle dunkings in the thawed bog, and perhaps I wouldn’t have taken the comedy nose-dive into the heather.

But, had the sun not been so low in the sky, and the hour of sun-set so rapidly approaching, we would have taken a longer route and thus would not tackled the rough-going direct route.

The timing had been the result of a number of factors, primarily a complete failure to get out of bed at anything approaching the intended early hour, followed by a mission to buy Mick some new boots. As it went, we set out onto Stanage Edge with only a couple of hours until sundown, and with little intention other than the objective of a ‘short stroll’.

Stroll we did, for a while, along the Edge and then along a track that led us to Redmires Reservoirs. Then we left the masses (and there were a lot of people out on this day of perfect walking weather, with stunning blue skies and views to match) and took a permissive path.

We knew that we didn’t have time to complete the originally intended route before dark, hence the spur of the moment decision to do the tussock route.

Jolly good fun it was too. Even the nose-dive bit. Perhaps the soft landing in deep heather helped.

It seemed for a while, as the legs started to tire of the constant exaggerated steps required by the terrain, that we were getting no closer to the road that we could see before us, but by and by we did get there, albeit not before having a bit of a snow-fight with the remaining patches of the white stuff.

Back onto the Edge we went, so as to avoid a bit of road walking, and our timing was impeccable. As we reached the Edge the bottom of the sun was just touching the horizon. As we came to our exit point, the sun was just sinking below the horizon; we paused to watch.

We dropped back down to the car park, surprised to find it still almost full. Then we looked back up and saw snakes of people making their way back down; people no doubt as determined as we were to get the most out of the fantastic day.

The great shame on such a perfect-weather day was that I had forgotten to pick up a camera. All was not lost, Mick has one of those new-fangled phones that comes complete with a camera. It’s not good spec, but it took a few snaps of the delights of the day.