Hope & Lose Hill, Derbyshire, England

The evening on which I took this was not my finest navigational hour. The day was being spent following the Limestone Way from Tunstead after walking there right through Tunstead Works on the way from Buxton, not at all a pretty prospect and less so on a dull grey day. All was going well until Peak Forest but confusion descended upon me after that, either through a lapse of concentration or due to not having any overlap between OS Explorers OL24 and OL1. Either way, I went to relocation mode, a process that landed me on tarmac before my confidence was restored to full power piece by piece. That's not to say that I was completely lost but I would have had difficulty putting my finger on a map and saying that I was there. Nevertheless, I got to Castleton as planned if not by the expected route and may seen more views over the Hope Valley than otherwise may have been the case.

The cloud did break to gift all who were out and about a glorious end to the day, some recompense after my mishap. The village of Hope and the spire of its church, St. Peter's, are hiding among the trees in the later summer sunshine. The church was the centre of a parish covering two-thirds of the Forest of the Peak, a royal hunting ground in other words. This was managed from Peveril Castle in Castleton, a ruin now but you can guess how the village got its name. Hope hosts an annual agricultural show in August of each year but it was cancelled in 2001 because of the Foot and Mouth disease outbreak. Behind the valley is Lose Hill, a hill with a few stories of its own to tell.