Hartington to Waterloo Inn

H aving only nine miles to walk today I didn’t make too much of an effort to rush up out of bed. I’ll be honest, my legs are beginning to ache – even with the day off in Ashbourne – and I could have quite happily just stayed there all morning. That mentality  certainly wouldn’t get me to the finish line any time soon so I slowly got myself sorted and went for breakfast, which was very nice indeed.

Fed and gear on I settled up and started my walk to the Waterloo Inn, near Taddington. As I said, this was only a short day so I was hoping to be there by lunch and have a nice easy afternoon.

The route out of Hartington took me along the lanes which thankfully weren’t too busy with cars. The weather wasn’t too bad but the wind was beginning to whip up a bit and there was a little drizzle in the air, but it wasn’t too bad.

Almost immediately I found myself heading uphill – it is the Peaks I suppose? – finally reaching the top after about a mile and ending up just over 1000ft again.

Fortunately it stayed reasonably flat after that initial shock to the legs all the way until I crossed the A515 a couple of miles down the trail.

I’d passed quite a lot of sheep in fields up to that point and I swear they were all looking at me and thinking what on Earth was I doing! It was just the look they kept giving me as I got buffeted by the crosswinds. I swear I heard one of them laugh as I got shoved sideways by the wind.

Once I’d dodged the speeding traffic across the A515 the road in to Monyash again took me in an uphill direction. If that wasn’t bad enough the weather started to take a turn for the worse with more wind and a little more rain. At one point visibility was down to about  fifty yards, which made walking along the now busier road a little interesting that’s for sure.

Luckily, as the road headed down hill in to Monyash visibility improved greatly, and by the time I was in the village the wind had dropped too, leaving just a little drizzle to deal with.

Monyash was a lovely, picturesque place and I found a bench by the village pond to stop and take a few minute’s rest. I sorted my maps out and re-laced my left boot; I think I did it up a little too tightly this morning and it had started to cause a little bit of discomfort.

After getting back on the trail, and as I was making my way out of the village I gave Matt a quick ring. Not having a signal yesterday meant I was cut off a bit from everyone, even with the patchy wifi in the hotel. At least he knew I was ok as we’d emailed each other last night but as the advert says…it’s good to talk!

Call finished I carried on walking – I had to stop as I started to lose the signal – and soon came across an old pinfold. Basically, stray cattle and sheep were rounded up by a pinder and kept in a pinfold. When the owner of said cattle/sheep came and collected them they had to pay a fine.

A little bit further up the road I picked up the Limestone Way which took me off the lanes for a bit and across more bleak farmland in to Flagg.

By now I only had a couple of miles left of the day’s route but they were certainly the toughest as they were all up hill. It was on this last leg of the route that I reached the highest point of the entire walk so far, 1381ft so my GPS told me. I know there are bound to be higher bits but that’s not too bad going, it being double the altitude I started the day at.

I arrived at the Waterloo Inn at 12:50am, not a bad effort, and promptly dumped my gear, ordered a pint and had some lunch. Heaven!

Lunch out of the way I headed off to my room to get myself sorted out and, as I had a signal on my phone, I uploaded all the photos from the last few days to Flickr, which took an age to do! I thought I’d limited the photos I needed to upload, clearly not?! I did intend on starting the write-up as well but never got round to it, watching trash afternoon TV instead.

I had a great phone call with the girls this evening. Alice is getting so talkative now. She told me that I’ve got a hundred pictures waiting for me that she’s drawn so I can’t wait to see all of them. She also told me that she’s doing sports tomorrow and that she’s really fast now.

Even Elisa came on the phone today, which I was really pleased at as she’s not spoken to me for a couple of days now. I think she much prefers the video calls, but tonight we had a little chat which was really really nice. She told me that they had burritos for dinner but she didn’t like the “white stuff”, i.e. the sour cream, but she told me that once it had been taken off she ate all the rest. Bless. Loved talking to her tonight as I’ve missed her these past couple of days.

With nothing else around where I was staying, dinner was had in the bar, which wasn’t a problem as the beer was good here and lunch had been great too. I had surf and turf with all the trimmings and it completely stuffed me out, so much so I couldn’t actually finish it all off!

A couple of pints later it was time for bed. Tomorrow’s walk, although not the longest, is going to be up hill and down dale again, worse than today from the looks of things. If the wind’s as bad as it was today it’s going to make for a tough walk so best get myself rested.

Photos and Route Details

I f you want to find out more about this day you can see the photos I took or view the route details.