Tors and moors

Day 16: today we left Hope behind (sorry, Dante) and headed out onto the bleak moors. There’s a huge contrast in landscape and vegetation between the limestone pasture of the White Peak, through which we walked for the last few days, and the gritstone, with peat bog punctuated by granite tors, of the Dark Peak. Bleak it may be, but peat bog feels like a homecoming to me by reminding me of Islay. (Although unlike on Islay there was an excellent path).

The granite tors have strange shapes - the one called the Wheel Stones looked to us from a distance more like a snail, although my photo manages not to make it look like either. I scrambled up a couple of them; others turned out to be harder than they looked.

While walking past the Ladybower reservoir, we met a man with “Ground Control” written on his overalls - most official-looking, though I’ve no idea what it meant. That led me to an old favourite as choice for Track of the Day: Space Oddity by David Bowie. Our journey is - hopefully - less perilous, and we’ve reached Deepcar, in the upper Don valley, where we’re enjoying royal hospitality with Rose and David.