The weather turned today, back into long trousers as it’s much colder, the wind is back and the rain is coming. We took to a low level walk today over first visiting Castleton bakery and then towards Hope on the river footpath towards Brough and then back up over the Cheshire Cheese Inn (which we didn’t go in) it was a rather lovely walk all on all. We also managed to just avoid the rain.

Today we headed out via Castleton bakery for a sausage roll & pasty before walking up to the Mam Tor Ridge, great ridge, black tor and lose hill. We had spectacular views across Castleton and Hope but then the rain started but it didn’t dampen our spirits on the 11km walk.

“A note to self”  that message was only a week ago and it’s a good job one of us remembered it – but  guess who.  So today was moving day and after a testing drive we finally came  through the village of  Castleton where there are 7 pubs and  only a 10 minute walk from our new  campsite.  We found our pitch and parked the van  and the question “shall we walk out with the dogs before we set up?” was asked.    One of us suggested we should set up our awning first after last week’s debacle in Coniston.  I have to say it was  the fastest set up ever and we were  soon on our way a walk put together by Tim to finish in the village  obviously !!!   Of course as we got to the village (right on queue)  it started to rain so we had to take  shelter and the only option was one of the seven pubs!  We got back to the van a while later grateful that someone had remembered “A note to self” as the awning was all set up, all we had to do was switch the light on and go to the fridge!   Still wondering who remembered…….

This isn’t a tick box exercise or a bucket list but you can’t help but count the number of campsites. Delamare Forest is 27th and see us come to the end of our 11th week on the road. It was inevitable that it would be busy, we couldn’t avoid being out in half term and perhaps we could have planned it better so that we were somewhere less family orientated in hindsight that would have been a good idea but we didn’t. The site is set on the edge of the forest with trails for cycling and walking right at our doorstep the downside is that it’s busy!