One of the joys of last year, my first year of retirement, was rediscovering my love of walking. When we first moved to Sheffield over thirty years ago, I used to go walking quite often at weekends. But some years ago I suffered a slight but niggling injury to my knee – I took up cycling for exercise, and one day stained something in my knee when pushing too hard up one of Sheffield’s many hills. It took a long time to clear up, and was always liable to reappear if I pushed things too hard, so out went not only the cycling but also the walking. Then after leaving the Civil Service I got jobs that were either a long way from Sheffield and entailed living away, or involved very long hours, or both, and I lost the appetite for spending more of my precious free time walking.
Last year was different, of course. I went back to the walks quite carefully – I was worried about overestimating my capabilities and getting myself into a situation where I would need assistance. However, I found that I was still able to do 10 to 12 miles, i.e. four or five hours on my feet, and I had some wonderful times. I tended to stay on the eastern side of the Peak District – i.e. fairly near to home – but there’s a range of walks available in that area, either in the north on the millstone grit, further south on the limestone, or in the middle, along the Mam Tor ridge.
Everything stopped for the winter, however, despite my thoughts at one time that I would try to keep it up. The very wet weather early in the winter didn’t help. But yesterday (13th of April) was wonderful – a classic spring day, warm enough, blue sky, dry and not too windy, so I was off out. As a starter I just did four or five miles. Starting from Abney village I walked up the narrow lane near Fold Farm, and where it ends (GR SK189802) I turned right onto a path. At the end of that I turned left onto Shatton Lane, an old upland track, and followed that down to the point where it turns sharp left where I left it and followed a footpath across open fields down to Offerton Hall. From there a sharp right turn and a stiff climb took me up onto Offerton Edge, with the path continuing across the open moorland and crossing Siney Sitch. A (more or less) straight line across the moorland led me to the slope down into the other end of Abney village.
All in all, about 90 minutes or so walking on a wonderful spring afternoon.
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