A Blizzard In April.

As some of you will probably have noticed we haven't done much walking of late so with that and a little project I have in mind for the summer which I will tell you about shortly I decided that it was time to do some regular walking trips. We couldn't have timed it better because no sooner did I have my boots on and were ready to leave and it started to snow. By the time we got on to the hill it was like a mini blizzard and soon everywhere was white over with snow. For me this was the best part of the day which the snow being driven side ways across the hill by a biting cold wind. It made the going quite hard at times. After about an hour though it gradually eased off and we were able to see more of our surrounding.Here you can see Tommy looking ahead for a place to stop for lunch, I told him there was another mile to go, I knew of a nice place in the shelter of a high wall. We had the place to ourselves for a while, and even then I wasn't aware we had company until Tommy suddenly started his 'Hound Of The Baskervilles' impression. I looked to see what the problem was and saw this guy looking around the end of the wall. By now Tom was in full swing and I just managed to grab his tail and pull him back. The guy asked if he was okay, meaning Tommy. I assured him he was fine, its just that people wearing hoods frighten him. The guy quickly pulled off his hood prefering to risk frostbite to dogbite. He walked by gingerly trying to make friends with Tom who was having none of it for some reason - well, not until he saw the guy getting out his sandwiches and then he wanted to go and make friends with him. I told him it was too late, its first impressions that count and he's blown it on that score. He's such a misunderstood dog!
After lunch we dropped down off the hill and made our way to the head of the dam and the old packhorse bridge at slippery stones. As you can see from the writing below this bridge used to be somewhere else. Long ago before they built the three reservoirs there used to be a couple of villages in the valley, both were covered when the reservoirs were flooded but they removed this bridge and built it at the head of he reservoirs and now it does a good job of making a crossing for the many people who travel this way.

We stopped here for a while for Tom to have a little paddle in the river, don;t ask me how he didn't get cold feet. He absolutely loved it though and in the end I had to drag him away.

From here it was an easy four mile walk back to the car near the Derwent Dam wall which you can see in the picture below.

If anyone wants any information on this walk or any other you read about in this blog please don't be afraid to ask.

Bob.