25th August 2021. A Ridge too Far
With good intentions of full filling their desire to conquer one of Derbyshires peaks, the Lads were bound for Edale, a small village nestled in a picturesque valley located in close proximity to Mam Tor, a local attraction for hill walkers in this county. Firstly they had to get there, previous plans were put in place and the train journey was booked, this would take the Lads from Leeds to Sheffield then from Sheffield they would take the train ride to Hope Valley then on to Edale. But as usual the best laid plans of mice and men came unstuck to say the least. Misfortune was to hit the Lads by means of disruption to their train journeys. Staffing problems for the lads at Leeds lead to a 40 minutes delay for their train from Leeds to Sheffield, meanwhile Dave had to change train midway through his journey to Sheffield, a line side fire was the cause here. Anyhow the outcome of all this was that Dave made the journey to Edale on his own leaving John , Colin and Brian to catch a later train . However all was not lost because of this delay, Dave carried out a brief reconnaissance mission by chatting to two local residents who assured him about an easier route to reach the top of this rather daunting range of hills. Bearing this in mind Dave now set off to meet the rest of the Lads has they arrived at the Station in Edale some 70 minutes later.
Greetings over the group of 4 now set out on this adventure to reach the ridge line that runs from Mam Tor and off in the direction of Loose Hill then down the other side and head for the railway station at Hope Valley. Little did they know about what was to become of this expedition , a rather slow uphill slog to start off with ,which included many rest stops along the way during which serious thought was given to whether we should carry on or turn round and head back down the hillside. We endeavoured to venture further only to realise this would be a somewhat{mission impossible} so after almost 90 minutes of uphill struggle interrupted with brief conversations with other hill climbers we decided to call it a day, this decision was made with great regret for the views from up here were so fantastic not to mention what they would have been from the summit. Our decent was a bit less of a struggle interspersed with banter of what we should have realistically done, ie ; taken a taxi up to the car park and then climbed the much lesser distance to the ridge top, maybe on our next visit to this splendid location.
Once down at the valley floor we now headed for the nearby Ramblers Pub for a well deserved meal and much needed rest to recover from this ordeal. Upon reflection we didn’t fail ,we sort of bit off more than we could chew, a ridge too far was our thoughts, it was just a pleasure to have made the journey to Edale and see what this location as to offer to its visitors, undoubtedly we will at some point return.With this thought in mind and the next train back to Sheffield due at 16:33 we made our way back to the railway station enjoying an amazing ice cream on our way.
Thanks Edale we certainly won’t forget this adventure.
Sorry about the order of photos
