Cave Dale and Mam Tor

We are in Castleton now, in Derbyshire.  We arrived yesterday and are staying for four days--two with Richard's friends from Cambridge and two with his parents.  The national park we are in is the Peak District, known for beautiful views and small historic towns.  The pub we're staying at is Ye Olde Nag's Head, a bit of a different name but known for a wide range of sausages to choose from and beers on tap.  Richard is working his way through both.

Today was a walking (hiking) day through Cave Dale, along the ridge above near some farms, and then a hike up Mam Tor.  The walk was beautiful and hard to describe the multitude of shades of green that could be seen in pastures and hillsides.  We travelled up through Cave Dale first with steep limestone sides in a dry valley.

At the top of Cave Dale was a continuation of the dry valley that might look familiar to fans of The Princess Bride.  It's the scene (linked here) where Buttercup learns the Dread Pirate Roberts is actually her Westley, previously thought to have died.  We took a short nap at the bottom of the hillside they tumbled down but did not re-create the scene ourselves.

There were lots of other walkers of all ages and group sizes, and a lot of students on hikes with what seemed to be school groups.  They were laden down with heavy backpacks but seemed to be having fun regardless.  We passed this farm and it was such a pastoral scene of a mother and her calf that is representative of the seeming peacefulness of these hillsides.

Here's the view of the hill we climbed--Mam Tor.  The name translates as "mother hill", and although it wasn't as steep as some climbs we've had in the UK it was still a bit of a challenge.  Looking at it from a distance it seemed like it would be tough (you can see some walkers already on the top).

Here is Richard when we reached the trig point, marking the top of the peak.

Here is a lovely view of Edale from the top (to the northwest of Mam Tor).

And a view of Castleon, for some perspective to see how far we'd walked to get here.

We walked back down and around the other side of Mam Tor, which is extremely unstable shales that are slumping down the hillside.  Hence why we walked up the other side of it!

The instability created problems with the road on this side, resulting in its closure.  It is accessible to hikers and bikes but not to cars.  Prior to the closure the road had experienced numerous re-pavings that Richard likened it to a sedimentary rock--perhaps tarmacadamite (according to what Richard himself coined at that moment to describe it).

Due to very sore knees we didn't go down in one of the bluejohn mining caves today, although Richard did buy me a lovely bluejohn pendant to keep his tradition of buying me lesser-known minerals as jewelry The name comes from a French description of the mineral's color "bleu jaune", or blue-yellow.  There are stripes of blue and yellow in the rock that give it the characteristic color.  Mine looks a bit like this, although it's square rather than round.  We'll visit a mine tomorrow, and possibly go into an abandoned lead mine that you tour by boat due to the water filling the previously-mined cavern.