Day 8: Wednesday 28th September

Peak District to Home.

As usual, the place seemed better by morning. Breakfast was perfectly reasonable, but it was ever so quiet; just us and two others, and eventually just me and the dog, some kind of spaniel. I don't really know what to say to a dog, so we just looked quizzically at each other. Soon we were back on the road, taking the Snake Pass between Glossop and Bamford - not nearly as scary as its name suggests. And that's even though I wasn't driving - I tend to be a rather nervous passenger, preferring to take responsibility for my own safety, though I probably should allow that strict adherence to the Highway Code does not a better driver make. It was a day of observations about other drivers, the first of which being: just say no to reversing out onto main roads!

On the way from Bamford, through Hope to Castleton I was struck again by what a small world the North can seem; "Hey, E from college lives around here" (just up that side-road, as it turns out); plus we'd made it from near-Manchester to near-Sheffield, along less than primary roads, in under two hours.

I'd visited Castleton years before, but didn't remember much about it. It's recommended for its scenic setting and its several Sehenswürdigkeiten. But stay away if you've a phobia of school parties. We took in two of the main locations before tea from the village shop in polystyrene cups. First, Peveril Castle, for which the village was named; a nice new English Heritage building followed by a vertiginous climb up to the castle's remains. The views were pretty special, and we could even check on the car. The castle, which dates from the 11th or 12th century I think, stands above...

... Peak Cavern, known since the Domesday Book at least as the Devil's Arse, or Divilsarse, or Diablo Rectum Intestinum. Allegedly. We and a few other civilians tagged along with a college group. As well as demonstrating that contrary to xenophobic stereotypes, German girls can be as attractive and feminine as any, it was a jolly interesting cave too. Beyond the public areas are a scary underground river and thirteen miles of mapped cave system, with 'perhaps ten times that' unexplored. Spooky. Visitors in previous centuries included, as well as Queen Victoria, Erasmus Darwin (the elder) and Lord Byron. So it's long been a haunt of the drug-addled, the eccentric, and nutcases of all kinds. Hurrah. Modern 'lunatics' can even hire the cave for functions, at £700 plus VAT; birthdays, anniversaries, witches' conventions... all in a fine tradition of an outlaws' 'underground Glastonbury' of centuries ago... The jackdaws living in the cave entrance are pretty cool; it was previously home to rope-makers, which must've been a strange lifestyle. Oh and the excellent guides have local accents in varying degrees of intelligibility.

Back on the road, the bright sunshine was gone as the weather began to close in. I mused on whether Radio 2 was the Dan Brown of wireless; not exactly mindless but not requiring any real mental engagement. Presumably explaining its broad appeal. But some might say this is generosity to Brown, and just a clumsy attempt to draw a parallel between things which are similar simply in their popularity.

Perhaps it was the rain, the Wiltshire-style roads or the fact that I wasn't driving, but the Staffordshire Peak District didn't seem nearly as appealing as Yorkshire. I was rather horrified at a big lorry doing over 40 mph through a soaking town-centre, hoping that a small child wasn't crossing the road just ahead. They weren't. Out in the country, a dead fox at the roadside evoked a pro-fox sentiment (along the lines of "aah, poor little fox"), which struck me as unusual, in that mention of foxes is usually in an anti-hunting context, which is in fact not the same thing as being pro-fox... Maybe that's just me.

I mused on my ambition to be, as a driver and in general, elegant, calm and appropriately laid-back. Heh. Then I saw a Mercedes-Benz CLS, which did indeed look striking but is indeed terribly un-'eco'. We passed a biscuit factory, which seemed a poor alternative to a chocolate factory (cf. York), a lot of lollipop ladies, and at length reached a friend's house at Burton-on-Trent for tea. Here were more dogs, labradors this time, and cats.

Leaving two hours later, the rain had really arrived, and it was time to stop messing about on minor roads and head for the motorway. I have to say, motorways at night in the rain are possibly my least favourite driving situation, so it was only to be a short distance. Motorways tend to tire me out as I tend to grasp the wheel with a kind of nervous tension but not actually move my arms much, what with there not being much in the way of bends. I also don't like having cars behind me at night, because they turn the three mirrors into, essentially, lights shining back at me (and of course the door-mirrors can't be dimmed). Plus I've never yet driven a car whose dipped-beam headlights I'd consider adequate, particularly at motorway speeds; but then these groovy new xenon lamps and such must be pretty dazzling for oncoming drivers, which is already a problem for me. On the pretty-much-unmarked Wiltshire roads I generally slow right down when anything's coming until I can see where the road goes again...

L'anyhoodle, we took the M6 Toll road, not so much by design as by being unable to find the M6 non-Toll road. It was reasonably clear of traffic, particularly as other people who'd paid to use the road, in vans and expensive performance cars, seemed not to think that heavy rain and half-light should preclude driving at 80mph or so, and tended to leave me behind on my own. Jolly good. Then the dread words, 'motorways merge'... but we got through it alright. Past Coventry, I got to thinking that even to meet the Eyecatching But ultimately Uninteresting would probably require serious revision to my policy on Going Out, alcohol, &c., and would be pointless without also wholesale changes in my appearance, character, and dress-sense. Best stay home with Radio 4 and a mug of tea, then.

Onward to Warwick, in the kind of rain that makes you wish the windscreen wipers had a faster setting, and then down through the Cotswolds. As usual I found myself always the front car in a line of traffic, which probably means I'm already more cautious (i.e. slower) and then the only one without someone else to follow. But such is the way of traffic. I spotted a lorry up ahead, and tried to catch up to it without speeding up (work that one out...). Dad suggested I might try using fog-lights as well. To be honest, visibility was more then 100 metres but I felt that every bit of illumination helped in these conditions, and so I allowed survival instinct to trump conscience. Though I still felt guilty and tended to switch them off when traffic was coming the other way, and when the conditions weren't quite so bad...

Of course in all this scary torrent, some people still felt the need to overtake. Presumably they were en route to some dire emergency that required them to break the 60 mph limit despite what seemed like some gigantic sprinkler dousing everything with gallons and gallons of water... [/rant] - To be fair, one of them overtook just as I'd lost a lot of momentum ascending one of those hills that, like Derry Hill, is successfully scaled at 42-45mph but now has a 40mph limit so requires lots of gear-changing and frustration. Obviously the other guy hadn't bothered with the latter.

So we wended our way, and I was very glad indeed for the cats'-eyes, perhaps the best companion possible in weather like that. Far further than my headlights alone could reveal, a starry ribbon of lights strung out into the distance as my shiny friends guided me home. They really are a brilliant invention, please can we have more of them? I was worried about what would happen once we crossed the border into Wiltshire, and of course, they became patchier and dimmer and eventually disappeared entirely near to Guess-Which-Town. Yet again I wondered what exactly Wiltshire taxpayers are getting for their money, and no, I don't accept a former co-worker's response that, since I don't pay council tax, I can't say anything about it.

But, with the car perhaps wetter than it had ever been, we made it home, maybe 12 hours after setting out for the day (which makes about 7 hours on the road). My room is still strewn with possessions in need of 'tidying', and I'm still rambling on and on. I shouldn't really have written the last part first because if I've learnt anything profound this week, I don't know what. But stay tuned, etc.

[Actually posted 01:38 September 29, 2005]