4 day Peak District adventure

What a wonderful place truly, from small cottages, sheeps, rivers and of course lots of hills, this trip was definitely a memory I will cherish for a long long time. 

Day of arrival: 

Everyone was excited for the hike; we had brought spare leftover pizza from last night’s pre-trip order out, and played chess and checkers on the trainway. Managed to rename the coal power plants to smoky smokes which started a trend of renaming objects. Went from Loughborough to Sheffield via train then after a drink in the pub nearby took the bus to Castelton. Had a prep hike through fields from our little cabin to Spar at Hope and walked the road back. Once back, dinner was made and we played a little bit of cards against humanity before everyone headed to sleep early in preparation for the big hike planned the next day. 

Day 1 of hike: 

What a killer day, 10 hours of walking and 45000 steps made. All in all it was worth it, we hit Mam Tor peak, walked along the ridgeline hitting two more peaks (Losehill) and then walked to a water reservoir (Lady Bower). Absolutely gorgeous day, although it killed my legs hahaha. Starting the day off strong with a smoothie whilst the others had eggs, (I don’t like the taste of eggs) and then getting out of the house by 9am. On the way to Mam Tor we found the Suicide Cave (named after a legend that has been since disprooven). The climb up was tiring, the incline was harsh but once we got to the top it levelled off for a while, to my relief. We saw SOOOO many sheep and a few cows close up. Great opportunity to practise my sheep language skills, Raunak told me I still had to perfect the pronunciation of the first A in BAAAA. Throughout the trip I did get a few of the sheep to turn their heads at me and BAAA back, which I believe indicated my improvement in the language. Alas passing through the cows we ended up at the foot of Mam Tor and to my great surprise it had a long line of stairs leading up to it, and I despise stairs. After a much needed rant about the atrocity of putting on such a peak stripping me of my adventures of climbing I managed to summit and after touching the stone I layed there for a while, starfish style. Also I should mention Raunak ran to the top from behind me so we could touch the highest peak in Peak District together in unison, isn’t that sweet :)! After a while, I was forced to get up when a LARGE group of young kids and their supervisor arrived and wanted a picture there. Which meant we continued moving onwards. I got to run down the other side of Mam Tor, a great run I would recommend, and then sat at the bottom between the decline and incline whilst the others made their slow way down using the stairs. See they didn’t understand the key to running down a good hill is to jump continuously because the momentum will carry you. Little effort, wind in the face adventure style hiking, what fun. 

Anyhow once they got down we continued through two other peaks and had lunch in between. Lunch consisted of yesterday’s chicken wrapped in a tortilla and some ham and honey in a tortilla. We had also cut up salad which was in my bag but no one ended up eating it on the hike so I carried it the whole day. Now my feet had started to kill by the time we reached the bottom of the ridge now having done a large loop around our house and we were still an hour or so away from our next and last stop. So we stopped at a pub and had hot chocolate. 

When we finally got back on our feet to continue we walked through a very cute town and past a donkey. The donkey was great. He followed us for the entire length of his enclosure as if protecting us. I got to touch its nose :). Walked through what looked like a hobbit style garden and past small roads when we finally after a long seemingly forever taking walk arrived at the water reservoir. A cool place if only my feet weren’t killing me. Now wanting to head back home and relax we waited for the bus, which did not come and then 20 mins later just passed us by. So we walked to town, took a pee break at a nearby pub and finished the day with a nice 30 min walk to the Bamford train station which had a bus station nearby. This station we would end up at again and again. Taking it back home we realised the only bus available and not hours away was a tourist bus the driver of which was very kind to let us ride for a cheaper price, although still quite expensive compared to a normal bus but we wanted to be home badly. Me and the boys decided to head to spar at Hope for dinner supplies and Jiya headed straight home. Now that 30 min walk between spar at Hope and home was the longest walk of my life. I walked like a snail with both of my ankles and soles of my feet in pain during every step, but I made it home. We had a lovely dinner thanks to Raunak and we watched the remaining episodes of Bridgerton season 3 that had come out that day. Going to sleep after that in preparation for another hike tomorrow. 

Day 2 of hike: 

I was allowed to wake up late the next day so I decided to wake up at 9:30, great stuff. We commenced our morning with their eggs and my smoothie and headed out to Robin Hood’s Cave near Bamford where we had stopped the hike the previous day. Now this was the hardest day of all, my feet were already killing me walking up to the cave, the slow inclined road was treacherous but little by little we made it up to the parking lot, phew. Now from here onwards the story gets interesting hahaha, it’s a field of sheep and rams that has a very sharp incline with lots of different paths to get up. Me and Raunak were lagging behind quite a bit because well my feet were consistently cramping and ailing and he was being supportive and helping. Through my various dizzy spells and pauses I managed to get to the top with only one wet sock but Raunak decided to take a different route. Once I reached the others I asked them where Raunak was, and having not seen him either I went on a search looking down the cliff walls at every possible point he could have ventured or fallen into. To our luck he was just under the first large rock as he had taken a wrong route so we had fun trying to shout at him below, whilst it was impossible to hear him from above. Then I filmed Jiya doing her little Lion King play, and to my surprise Raunak had done the same which resulted in 2 very cool and funny videos. Apparently he could hear everything she was saying from down there and was pointing at her when she was acting, without either of us noticing. Once that was over Raunak found a tight cliff wedge to climb up through and we continued on our journey to the cave. 

At the cave, it was amazing, exactly what me as a child would have called a great adventure. Sooo many holes and caverns and cool rock structure, absolutely amazing. I found a hole in the wall to squeeze through but Raunak started filming when I was already half way through, so of course I had to climb back out and then through again for the video. Sheil and Jiya went to the cave bit first as it was somewhat of a small area, then I joined bringing a knife to carve our names into the rocks surface, similarly to all the other names there from other shelter and safety finders. Then Raunak joined us and we once again had our tortillas although this time we had made double the amount learning from our earlier mistake as the day before we had gone hungry for a while. Then we noticed the wind picking up and the dark clouds heading towards us so we decided to take shelter within the cave. We remained there for around an hour before we decided to head back down to town, buy groceries and hop on the bus back home. Again passing by that same Bamford bus station. It was a slow way down primarily because at that point I found it difficult to walk, but alas it is all a part of the adventure of the trip. Once home we watched Bad Boys and then Sheil cooked us a Ragu pasta, delicious. We sat down and watched the second movie whilst eating and then everyone went to sleep excited for another day to come. 

Day 3 of hike/town: 

The boys decided to go hike up to Kinder Scout via Kinder Low Trig point and me and Jiya stayed in town to explore. Mainly because l could barely walk at the end of day 2 and Jiya was also tired so we opted for a peaceful restful day. I woke up late at like 10 whilst Jiya was up at around 8, we got ready, watched Instagram for a while and then at around 3pm went to walk around town. We entered 6 jewellery stores selling the Blue John Mineral Jewellery, England’s rarest mineral only accessible within that area in Peak District. I really wanted a piece to commemorate the trip with but I didn’t find any jewellery that fit my taste so I decided to sleep on the idea for a day and instead bought some socks, a cute rock frog and a pin. I also got a book to press flowers in for my mom and a bath bomb for Raunak since he had never had one. After some ice cream and grocery shopping we headed home and not long after the boys made it home as well from their adventure. We left them to watch White Chicks whilst we made a cream mushroom pasta. Whilst eating we watched Bad Boys 2 together and then the boys cleaned up and everyone headed to bed for a day full of travel. 

Return day: 

As the trip came to an end I reflected on the good group of friends I had now found and my new appreciation for hiking the hillsides. We also started planning our next trips creating a bucket list including Kilimanjaro, Snowdonia and others. The day started off slow with another smoothie and lots of packing. We left the house at 10 and showed the boys some cool shops in town. They ended up buying some stuff from a crystal and mineral shop closest to our house. We then decided to go up to the castle on the hill but realised as we got to the summit that it cost 12 pounds each, so Sheil went up and the rest of us went to explore a cemetery nearby. The Cemetery had lots of very interesting graves shown in the pictures above, including someone from the navy! After Sheil’s return we decided to find a pub to dine at for a Sunday roast. The food was decent, wine was good and company was great, there is no better way to end a good hike. Food was decent, wine was good and company was great, there is no better way to end a good hike. When Sheil came down he brought a bottle of mead with him, which I was really excited to try, but disappointingly mead was not available at the pub. (A week later we had dinner at Sheils and drank the mead, to my surprise it was too spicy for me so I only had a little bit, but the honey flavour was really enjoyable!) After the pub we headed to the bus to get back to Sheffield where we had a nice drink at the pub and then headed back to Loughborough via train. 

This concludes the Peak District trip of 2024, it was fantastic! Follow along for more of my adventures 🙂