Peak District Traverse - Review

Well, I've been back a week, blisters have more or less healed and the country is gripped by a heatwave that would probably have made for nicer walking than the clouds, occasional light showers, and solid drizzle on the Tuesday morning that I actually got.  Time to gather my thoughts then...

Beer!

This was a pretty good route if I say so myself.  Walking out of, and then into cities worked well, and if anything added to what was already a wide variety of terrain.  For sure, after the first couple of days there weren't many hills, but there was still plenty of climbing in and out of dales, even ignoring the detour to Buxton (which is probably for the best).  Indeed, looking at the twenty-five miles or so South of Edale, I'd have to rate that as a better walk than the featureless, boggy slog that is the last thirty to forty miles of the Pennine Way.  Now I love the Way, and I know its history and the reasons why it starts and ends where it does, nonetheless I do wonder if it might be a better walk if it started in the southern Peak District and finished at a more southerly point on the Scottish Border - say, a little to the West of Kielder Water.

Nag's Head.

I suspect my fourth day through the farming country of North Staffs, on the other hand, is never going to rank that highly in the annals of long distance paths.  That said, there were days on the Coast to Coast that weren't unlike it, barring the way that the footpaths were very rarely used - which was a bit of a shame.  I think if I did this section again, I'd want a larger scale map with field boundaries... and maybe a machete to deal with the nettles.

Things I learnt from this walk :

1) A torch of some kind is not a luxury.
2) Putting all your food and accomodation eggs in the same basket is not a good plan.
3) I can do 20 mile plus days, with pack, pretty much from the get-go, this is good.
4) I need to pay more attention to my feet if I'm doing this though.
5) Even the warmest of my sleeping bags isn't really up to a September night in Yorkshire.
6) On the other hand, a sweater makes a fine emergency pair of long johns.
7) The 'grand canyon' rucksack has altogether too many straps, and even the ones it should have are too long.
8) My HTC smartphone actually works perfectly well as a camera + blogging device, barring the way it has eaten one of my posts.  I may have to 'root' the thing to prevent this happening in future...

And enough blogging already.  Fear not, I am not going to update every week with my thoughts on politics or whatever.  The blog may return at some point in the winter with, 'Timmy goes Skiing'.

Stoke.

Oh, and if these photos were not enough for you, go see some more.