Close En-cow-nters

I don't actually remember what our Sunday walk was called in the guidebook, maybe Peak Forest Walk or something like that, but we chose it because the start of it was right across the street from our cottage. Very convenient. Unlike Padley Gorge and Carl Wark and Higger Tor, this walk was all out in the open, mostly through horse, cow, and sheep pastures.

 I actually think these first few pictures we took of some neighboring field, because this is before we get to the landmark that begins the walk.

Here's the landmark, a wooden gate with an old water pump by it. It took a few minutes to find the right place on the road.

 Then we walked in some tall grass and nettles, along a stone wall, for a very long time.

The whole walk was through various people's land, but the actual paths we were following were public footpaths, so we weren't trespassing. We passed by a dairy farm with many cows full of milk.

We passed by many sheep.

And we saw many, many, old stone walls. Some of them were in good condition, others were in various states of ruin, and some couldn't even be called walls, just long lines of stones, perhaps intended to become walls.

This walk wasn't as tricky as the previous ones, but we did sometimes consult the map.

Here's me making fun of those absolutely massive cows in the background.

In some places on this walk, and often in pastures we saw while we were driving around, the cows were having little cow-wows. This picture not so much.

It was sometimes a little nervousing going through a pasture full of cows, like maybe they didn't want us there and would turn into mad cows and like hurt us with their massive heads. But it was okay. And we had trail mix, too.

Eventually we exited the pastures and walked along a road for a bit. But of course there was still grass visible for miles around.

 Here I am, looking at something on the road.

It's a butterfly.

Finally, if you look at the sheep lying down by this little pen, it looks like one realllly long sheep, when in fact it's TWO sheep, HA ha ha.

This concludes my Peak District blogging. A final note that I didn't get a chance to make previously is that in addition to the abundance of stone walls in the region, we also noticed that all buildings are made of stone. We were wondering if there was some sort of "keep it quaint" ordinance.

The End.