Day 8 - Hope to Hathersage - 9 Miles

I got up first in the little cottage by The Nag's Head in Edale, despite Karen seeming to think 8.30am was scandalously late the night before when goign to bed!:) I actually got up at 8.45am and didn't have too much of a hangover luckily. With not drinking much of late I thought five pints in one evening would be more than I could possibly cope with.

When K got up and showered, there was another change of plan for breakfast. We had been going to eat at a cafe over the road from the Nag's Head, but instead we'd drive to Hathersage to drop one of the cars off and eat there. We set off after posting the keys through the letterbox of the pub. Karen kept trying to ring David on the way to see if they'd set off or not, but got no reply and there is no signal in Edale to have rung from there. We called in at the campsite just the other side of Hope but all the tents were gone so we carried on to Hathersage. Just as we pulled up to park in the street David turned up. He'd apparently left his phone in his coat pocket in the back of Karen's car when we'd turned up to drop his tent off the night before! Whoops! It was incredibly lucky that he'd managed to see us drive by and that we'd met up at all! He'd left the others of his group to go off on their walk and walked all the way from Hope to Hathersage along the road in the hope that we'd see him on our drive to drop a car off there!

We went for some breakfast in a little cafe by where we'd temporarily parked. The blokes in David's group walked by as we sat there eating our less than impressive bacon and mushroom baguettes. They would have been nice in fresh bread but I reckon it had been stale and so they'd decided to toast it, making it even more crumbly and saliva suckingly dry!

We went around to the official car park, which was full and ended up leaving Karen's car parked in a street nearby. All three of us then drove back to Hope to leave my car there and set off for our day's walking. We went to the shop for provisions as we weren't sure there would be anywhere to eat on the way today. We finally set off at about 11.30am, up the road out of Hope past The Cheshire Cheese and over the river bridge, taking a track that started a gradual climb up the flanks of Win Hill before turning south the other side of the railway line. It eventually joined a steep tarmac track up to a farm and holiday cottages.. a steep climb for this morning that got steeper the other side of the holiday cottages! before eventually flattening out again near the summit.

The summit was actually a little knob of rock like a tor on dartmoor. I waited at the top looking out over Ladybower and Derwentwater reservoirs to the north while David and Karen caught up. It was really quite windy up here, but at least dry today unlike yesterday! We sheltered behind some rocks to eat snacks and drink. Karen had forgotten her water and david hadn't got any.. at least them drinking all mine made it lighter to carry from here! Lucky I always carry at least 2 litres of liquid when I go out for a days walking! After a while we began our descent of the far side of Win Hill. It was a much more gradual ascent than our steep climb had been and was generally quite pleasant, looking across the valley of the Derwent below the main dam of the reservoir to the north.

We decided to do a slight detour when we reached a lane and carried on along it to the main road at the bottom, instead of cutting across fields down to the main road further along. The reason for this was a visit to the pub marked on the map.. The Rising Sun. We therefore turned right along the main road for a few hundred yards, going the other way to the official route. The pub was quite posh and Karen and I ordered some mediterranean style prawns and bread. They were initially dubious about serving us only snacks but as it was gone 3pm they agreed. They were quite tasty and posh. When we'd eaten and drunk a couple of pints we set off back down the road the way we'd come and then further along it to the next right across a bridge over the river and then took to a riverbank path all the way along past stepping stones until we reached a road bridge over the river leading back up to Hathersage. We joined the road at this point and walked back up into the town where we'd left Karen's car in the morning. I was actually quite weary by this point which was naff coz we'd only walked 14 miles in 2 days! hardly that taxing!

Karen dropped me off at Hope and then I drove back. I decided to cut through the lanes to the A6 and down that to derby to join the A38 to Burton to join the A444. It took the best part of 2 hours that way so I would have definitely been quicker to go the long way around and used the motorways instead.