Seeking quiet, being cautious around others
Published on 23rd October 2024 Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutesThere has been a trip report hiatus on here. The cause was my assembling a visitor guide to Canada. Even with automation and GenAI, that took quite a bit of time; in contrast, this trip report is handwritten, not machine-spewed. There were quite a few websites to process, and Canada is a very big country. It could have been that I bit off more than I should be chewing. While breaking the assemblage apart now seems sensible, I will leave that for later. The whole effort may tempt me to return to the place yet.
Thinking about the delights of Canada turns out to be vastly more exciting than thinking back to 2021, a year when the big story was the roll-out of vaccinations for everyone. Some jumped at the chance to put the pandemic behind them, while others took a more cautious approach; I was one of the latter.
Even with a single dose of the vaccine, I still took things slowly. It helped that I had other things to do, and had acclimated to the situation anyway. There was no venturing beyond the counties of Cheshire, Derbyshire and Staffordshire for me. That applied to the Spring Bank Holiday weekend at the end of May that year.
Saturday was typical of what happened in the run-up to the weekend. There may have been a good deal of sunshine that spring, yet I stayed local all the while. The most memorable thing about Easter of that year was that all Easter Eggs had been sold; there were none left in the shops when I went looking. Otherwise, things were slowly opening after the winter lockdown. That was the backdrop to an evening cycle that took me around by Gawsworth.
The next day, Sunday, was hardly any more dramatic. The sunny weather allowed for a walk from Disley back to Macclesfield that avoided Lyme Park while taking passing Lamaload Reservoir. These parts were becoming very familiar to me through passing through them so often. The real bliss was in how few were going the same way; perhaps others were going further afield, leaving me with the reassurance of solitude. After all the restrictions, it might have been the others were getting bored, and I remember moans about the behaviour of visitors to the Lake District earlier that year. My own search for added novelty got going in 2022 when I could get as far as Ireland.
Stitching together frayed memories, I now realise that a Bank Holiday amble from Monyash to Bakewell was not quite the reprise of earlier ones going between the two places. The hint was my following the Limestone Way out of Monyash. Instead of venturing into and through Lathkill Dale as I had been thinking, I avoided it. Instead, I passed One Ash Farm and descended into Cales Dale only to climb out of it again, a steep down and up for my legs.
It all shows that there is an aspect of plateau about these parts, with dales being cut into that over the passage of geological time. Staying out of those gouges for at least a while had me going around by Low Wood, a Peak District National Park property. Thus far, I got the sense that I was facing a busier day than the one before. While there were quiet moments, more were drawn out by the sunshine, like I was.
My target was the River Bradford, and it was here where I would encounter quite a few groups going the way, adding discomfiture to this single vaccinated wanderer. Nevertheless, there were ample opportunities to admire the bucolic surroundings. Even so, my designs on following the river all the day to Bradford were stymied by gatherings on its banks. To look at these, one would think that the pandemic never happened.
Instead, I left the river to go through the village of Youlgreave before continuing to Bakewell on a hazy afternoon when the warmth of the sun could be felt. Maybe the sense of summer was the cause of there being so many sunseekers along the banks of the River Bradford. Piecing together the way from Youlgreave to Bakewell is a puzzle created by the passage of time. There are hints, like the spending of time in a cemetery away from the town centre. Any hint of a crossing over the River Lathkill by means of Conksbury Bridge appears plausible yet cannot be confirmed. The recollections are as hazy as the afternoon was. One thing is clear, the mix of road and path was not one that I followed before.
The thing that is better etched into my mind was how busy Bakewell was when I got to the heart of the place. There was a wait for the bus home, and it did not feel very comfortable about the lack of any form of social distancing. It felt like the pandemic had ended for many, and they were getting back to what they did before it. This was going to grow as the year continued; this was something that I needed to learn to handle. After all, there were signs of slippage with mask wearing on the way home, even if I bore no lasting consequences.
Travel Arrangements
Getting to Disley on Sunday was by train with a change in Stockport. On Monday, there was a return journey on bus service 58, getting off in Monyash on the outbound journey and embarking from Bakewell on the way back to Macclesfield.