Goyt Valley.

First walk for a couple of weeks, so why not do two.....great idea.

Matt and myself had looked at two walks over two days, mine was around Goyt Valley which included Fernilee and Errwood reservoirs, with Matt's taking in Allgreave and the Roaches.

Day one, Goyt Valley.

Traffic was really bad leaving Nottingham, it's amazing how much busier the roads are when the kids are back at school, so we didn't get to the car park until about 9.30 ish, Adrian was already there when Joe, Matt and myself rolled up. After a brief discussion about the cheap phone charger I had bought and had failed on the way, leaving me with no phone, no sat nav and worst of all, no ENDOMONDO (other tracking software is available), we set off. We started from a car park next to a small pond/lake/pool which is west of Buxton before the reservoir at Errwood. Heading down and across Wildmoorstone Brook and on towards Wild Moor, everything was fairly easy going and we had a steep climb ahead of us. It didn't look too bad initially, that was until we started climbing it. It was tough going to say the least, short but pretty painful, for me anyway. I got to the top of the steepest part and just had to sit down. I was trying to get air into my lungs because my head was spinning and I felt sick. The others took one look at me and asked if I was alright? My response, between gasping for air was something along the lines of "I'm not sure if I am going to puke or shit myself".....I really did feel that bad. A few minutes of heavy breathing and I felt much better, never felt that way before and don't particularly want to feel like that again. We continued the climb over Wild Moor with no more untoward events, apart from disturbing the local Grouse population who let us know about it in no uncertain terms.

In among the Grouse on Wild Moor.

Crossing a small footbridge we arrived at Goytsclough Quarry where we decided to a have a quick break before moving on. Adrian pulls out a bag of mixed nuts and raisins, Joe had a sandwich, I had a  muesli type bar and Matt pulls out a really healthy looking Ginsters chicken slice...well, it was cheap he said. After demolishing the Ginsters, we walked on towards Errwood Hall, after there, it was all uphill towards Shining Tor. The views from here were amazing as it was such a clear day. After much deliberation of where in the UK we were looking over we decided that we should have paid more attention in geography lessons in school. We carried along the ridge towards The Tors and Cats Tor, where we met a lone man who started chatting with us. He seemed to know the area very well and pointed out to the more geographically challenged of us, that the two major Cities/Towns we could see were indeed Manchester and Macclesfield. He then began to give us his life story and our eyes glazed over. It turned out that he was a magician, we said that we were too and promptly vanished!

The weary walkers arrive at Shining Tor.

That's Manchester in the distance....or was it Scunthorpe?

For a bite to eat, we stopped along the ridge looking out over Errwood reservoir. It was a brilliant view on a really clear sunny day. It was about this time that I thought I'd better check my feet for blisters. Having used the Blistop (bought for me by my lovely wife, see previous blogs) early in the morning I was hoping for an absence of the little buggers. There were none where I usually get them, happy days, but there was the blister from hell on my heel. I patched it up with a blister plaster. I think it was caused by my boot being slightly looser than normal, school boy error. Joe had a nasty toe blister which he tended to and then we were off again. It was decided that because of the lateness of arriving, that rather than walking in the direction of Fernilee, that we would head off the ridge and down towards Errwood reservoir. A short time later we were at the road that crossed between Errwood and Fernilee reservoirs where we spent several minutes marvelling at the engineering of the dam and it's sluice....that's what us engineers do you know....marvel at engineering things, mainly because we know of the hard work that's gone into it and the possible cock ups along the way!

Errwood Reservoir.

Fernilee Reservoir.

From here we circumnavigated (big word time) Bunsal Cob and made our way up to the car park where we started. Again, the weather had been superb and we'd had a really good day (barring blisters) it seems that the sun is really shining on us, no doubt before we get the drenching of our lives at some point.
During the days journey, we'd decided to shelf the walk that Matt had planned and revisit KInder Scout, mainly because Joe hadn't been there before and the weather was looking like it was going to be another glorious day.

Not sure about the Max speed on this, but as you can see on Matt's ENDOMONDO by eating a Ginster's Chicken slice you have to walk about 15km to negate the calorie intake!!!!













Coming soon...............return to Kinder, the sequel, part deux, take two...another chance to see etc.

Chris