Mam Tor, Edale, Peak District

Well yes I am sunburnt and a little tired now after a little stroll :) The organisation was slightly better than last time.. i.e. I wasn't eight hours late this time and my clutch on my car behaved.. However I did faff a little and began my journey out at about 08:35 (5 minutes late) lol.. anyway I went off to pick up Ben and we faffed there.. lol Ben was making last minute footwear decisions.. and telling me about his day in Evesham before.. We made our way a little further and picked up Helen P.. who allegedly been waiting for us for 15mins outside her house :p all ready we set off towards the Peaks via the usual, stone, leek, buxton route.. get regular updates re peoples positions.. i got ben to phone helen e to make sure that they had got out of bed... lol only to get a helpful text message shortly later saying we are lost.. oh dear :)



Anyway arriving at the Winnats Pass Car Park, Alex, Fran and Sarah had been waiting.. a rapid round of phonecalls to find out where people were.. Richard had been driving around Castleton for an hour lol.. Helen E and Tom were somewhere in Castleton in a random car park.. at which point I had to move a car over to Edale for later.. So Alex and I did that.. semi-hoping on my return the remaining five people had turned up.. lol.. ant and another helen - thats three helens arrived so now only 3 to arrive.. at this point establishing with helen e that they were in castleton and walking in the right direction.. and rapidly approaching midday we finally all got to gether - not too bad an hour late :)



We decided to have a gentle walk because it was getting a bit muggy so we headed towards Mam tor, via Treak Cliff Cavern.. after a slightly going the wrong way we corrected and walked up to the pass between Mam Tor and Lords Seat.. noticing the variety of coloured paragliders launching from the top. I reckon there was maybe a dozen of them at this point circling around.. A quick ascent to the top of Mam Tor we grabbed some lunch at the side.. and watched the mist rise of the hills to give us a lovely view of edale. I saw what I thought was a baby paraglider, expecting a dare-devil tott to be taking to the skies.. then realising it was a kite lol..



The sun blazing now, we started to move off as we were all getting a little bit sleepy and we headed back down to the pass and back over Lords Seat. Following a few discussions relating how important bum jokes were value to a relationship we reached the the summit and it was blue skies :) and the beginning of reddening skin too..

After another short rest we began to head west down to where the path crosses the old pennine way and turned noth heading towards edale. Decision time and enusing other commitments we decided the pub on a nice summer afternoon would be a good option, so we made our descent back down to edale via Chapel Gate, where I took a few snaps of some roses and thistles. Also admiring the view :)



At which point our party split, where the drinkers went to the pub and the drivers went back to the car..



Driving back up through Winatts Pass I did my usual random photos out of the window, I decided to park the cars in the car park furthest away from the pub car park genius.. After being convinced that I should try the local home brew in the country fare which was going on, I caught up with the rest to wind the walk off with a lovely refreshing drink in the pub :)



Summary:

Better than last times organisation.
Nice sunny day
Pub was definitely needed at the end.