The Longest Schlep – Still Schlepping

A happy entry! At last! I’ve made myself depressed all over again just typing about all this other stuff and I finally get to think about something truly fun and happy! Woohoo! If you made it through the last few entries, you’ll have noticed that lately I’d been rather…stressed. You won’t be the only one, Kevin noticed it, too, which is why he suggested that we go away for a few days to relax and stop thinking about all this job stuff. So, the day after my interview at Amazon, we headed up to the country. 

I can’t tell you how excited I was to go on this trip. Ever since we’d talked about it a few days earlier I’d been dreaming of peace and quiet, being miles away from everything that was on my mind…and driving. God, I had missed it so much! Back home, try taking anyone away from their car for 6 months and see how that goes…but here, there’s just no need to drive anywhere. So when I found out that we were renting a car to drive up to the Peak District, I was so excited to get behind the wheel again!  

When our car was delivered, a cute red Renault Clio, we started packing everything in. When I’d been crippling my shoulder with my two-ton bag on the walk to the train station that morning I thought I may have over-packed, but when I saw Kevin’s pile of outdoor gear and other stuff I suddenly felt like I was going to be in trouble in the country. He had packed hiking boots—I had packed black patent leather heels. As we piled in more and more stuff from his house, my one little bag was looking rather inadequate. I hadn’t really given much thought to what we might do in the country, but I was wishing at that moment that I had…and packed accordingly. Once we’d finished piling everything in, we hit the road.

It felt so good to drive again after such a long hiatus. I had been a bit concerned about getting out of London, but it wasn’t that bad at all—much easier than driving through downtown Atlanta during rush hour. It took a while to get to where we were going, but we did stop a few times and weren’t in any hurry at all. When we arrived it was nearly dark, but I could still tell that the area was beautiful. Our cottage was situated on a place called Cotterill Farm, just outside a tiny village. The owner met us, gave us the key and a complimentary bottle of wine, and showed us around. The cottage was so nice! It was a 2-floor plan, with a bathroom, a double bedroom, and a twin bedroom on the ground floor and the living room and kitchen upstairs. It looked like it had been renovated recently, and had an exposed wooden beam ceiling, a flat panel TV, DVD player, a fully-kitted kitchen, and comfortable country-chic furniture. It was as much a destination in itself as the surrounding countryside as far as I was concerned. 

That first night Kevin cooked spaghetti bolognese for dinner and we watched Hide and Seek, which I had hoped would be a good scary movie but turned out to be complete crap. Kevin has this idea that I only like idiotic movies, and I don’t think that one helped argue my case to the contrary at all. The weather was really odd that night, with the wind absolutely howling outside and the rain really coming down hard. If a sheep had gone flying by the window, I wouldn’t have been that surprised. The weather was strangely reminiscent of our first night in Gran Canaria when we discovered the strong winds and rain that had woken me up had actually been a tropical storm passing through.      

The next day, after a late breakfast and after poring over binders with various activity recommendations, we drove about three miles to do the Dovedale walk. It was an absolutely gorgeous day, blue sky and in the upper-50s. We set off across a road to a field that marked the beginning of our trek on the map we were using, which had been written by the owner of our cottage. It was extremely detailed, so I thought it would be pretty straightforward to follow. Sure enough, we found the stile we were looking for to enter the field and were on our way.  I started off daintily, hopping over the mud and tip-toeing around piles of sheep droppings, but after a few equally messy fields I gave up and resigned myself to having disgusting shoes. Kevin had come better prepared than me, and was quite happy to slog on through the muck in his hiking boots as if he did it everyday of his life. At the time I was packing my suitcase to come to England it just never occurred to me to opt for Gore-Tex over Anne Klein.  

The scenery was gorgeous as we walked along. The hills rose and fell gently, except where the slopes dropped quickly away to a narrow valley carved out by the River Dove. Small farmhouses dotted the landscape and a variety of stiles carved into the sturdy stone walls served as passage from one field to the next as we followed our map. Each hilltop revealed a new view, and every view revealed some interesting new feature to the countryside. Although the scenery was varied, the livestock was not; there were sheep everywhere, and absolutely nothing else. Kevin said he thought he saw some vultures circling once while we were lost, but those sheep have definitely got the country to themselves for the most part.    The man who wrote out the directions for our walk had thoughtfully added an estimated duration to give people like us an idea of how much time to allot for our day’s excursion. Having chosen a walk with an estimated duration of 2 hours and 40 minutes, we thought we’d be back before dark with plenty of time to spare when we set out at 1:30 in the afternoon. That was before we realized that the man who had made the directions was not your average, leisurely walker, but must instead have been an Olympic cross-country runner. It would have actually been okay if that had been the worst of it, but in addition to being the world’s fastest walker his directions were so bad it’s a wonder he can find his face in the mirror in the morning. At the beginning of our walk we managed to find everything okay, but somehow his instructions went completely wrong. We had followed them perfectly, but then we found ourselves on a hillside not knowing whether to head away from the river or down towards it. We decided to go down, which turned out to be the wrong way. So, in addition to nearly killing myself by falling off the side of the extremely steep hill, we were on our own for finding our way back on track. It was very pretty along the river, so I’m glad we made our little detour. We followed it for a while, trying to get to a point that we knew was on our pathetic map, but as we went along the sun slowly sank behind the hills and the temperature started to drop. We found a place to scramble up to the top, passing an older couple making out on the hillside along the way, and by some miracle we found a farm that was in the original directions we had been using. We were back on track! For a little while, at least. Just as before, the directions went wrong and we were back to navigating by the sun…what little was left before we were left completely in the dark. There was a moment when I thought we really were going to be lost in the dark, freezing and up to our necks in sheep crap. It had been funny at first, but after so many hours of being lost the humor in our situation was quickly turning to frustration. The directions said to turn left at an impressive farmhouse, walk through a field and turn right at a tree. Sounds great, except what exactly constitutes “impressive?” And just in case he hadn’t noticed, there are lots of fields and lots of trees in the country. We ditched the directions and went back to using our judgment, and we found our way back just as it was getting too dark to spot the sheep patties before I’d already stepped in them. I guess 4 hours isn’t too far off 2 hours and 40 minutes… 

Needless to say, we were tired when we got back to the cottage. Good thing we had a nice roast dinner to look forward to. We’d stocked up on groceries before we went to the cottage and got everything we needed to make a roastie, except oil and salt, which we’d assumed would be in the cottage already. Turns out they weren’t. It’s impossible to make a proper roast without oil, and anyone here who knows me will tell you I can’t go a meal without dusting everything with salt, so we decided to ask the cottage owner if we could use some of theirs. We had tried earlier in the day to reach them because we hadn’t been given towels (for showers I’d had to use a dish towel and Kevin was using a dry washcloth), and again that evening, but they weren’t home. These people were hard to get a hold of. I’d knocked, and then later in the day when Kevin came back from trying he said that he’d tried the door, and it was unlocked. We decided we couldn’t possibly go in and borrow anything without asking, so we drove to the nearest town to buy some. When we rolled into the teensy village it turned out that both the general stores were closed. We went back to the cottage and tried knocking again to see if the owners were home, but when still nobody came to the door, we decided to take drastic measures. 

I stood watch. It was my job to keep an eye out for headlights in case the owners came back. Explaining what was going on if they drove up seemed imminently preferable to having them walk into their house and find Kevin rifling through their cabinets. Kevin’s role involved the actual breaking and entering portion of the crime spree, although technically he was just entering. He had taken in a little bowl for the oil and a salt cellar to get topped up. It seemed like an eternity before he finally came out. He said all they’d had was olive oil. I stopped. I’m no expert at making roasts, but I was pretty sure olive oil wasn’t right. To make matters even worse, I actually sent him back in to look for vegetable oil. Finding none, we took our ill-gotten goods and went back to our cottage to make dinner, sans towels. And boy, was it good. Kevin suggested leaving a note to let the owners know we’d been in their house while they were out, but I thought it was best not to. I couldn’t imagine they’d be very comforted by the fact that they’d been burgled by someone considerate enough to leave a note.  

The next day we decided against one long walk in case we found ourselves wandering lost in the dark again, and opted instead for two short walks. It was colder than the day before, but the worst part was the wind. I had to wrap my scarf around my face to keep it from freezing. Speaking was a near impossibility, and what I did manage to say came out slurred and stuttered. Apart from the cold, however, it was another perfectly beautiful day, without a cloud in the sky. We saw some different terrain that day, and hiked up to the top of a hill that gave us the most incredible view of the entire area. We didn’t manage to get too lost, although we did give up on the map at one point.  After a quick late lunch in the car we headed off on our second walk. This particular trail wound along the edge of a deep valley that looked a dusky purple in the late afternoon light. It was, like everywhere else we had seen, stunningly beautiful. Miles from any busy roads, the only sound besides the occasional plane passing overhead was the sound of the wind blowing through tall grass. We had once again been led astray by the directions and the sun was about to set, but in such a perfectly idyllic spot I couldn’t help but think that there was no better place to be lost. As we sat on the side of the hill and watched the sun dip below the horizon I didn’t care that we didn’t know if we were going the right way or not, or whether I had done well in the interview, or where I’d be in a year’s time—it was one of those rare moments when nothing mattered except for that very second in time, the smell of damp earth, the fading light on an old stone barn in the valley, and the warmth of a caring arm around my shoulder. We did make it back, but just barely before we could no longer make out our hands in front of our faces. Back at the cottage we had leftovers, played some cards and finished a movie we’d started the night before. The next morning we had to check out, but we couldn’t find any papers anywhere that said what time we had to be out by. Therefore, we decided to take our sweet time. We had just finished breakfast when the owner’s wife came to tell us that check-out had been 45 minutes ago and that the cleaner would be coming soon. So we packed up all our stuff and took one last look around. I really hated to go. It seemed like such a short trip and I just wasn’t ready to head back to London quite yet.  We took our time driving back. We stopped off so Kevin could buy his mom some specialty cheese, then we stopped to have lunch and play beach tennis at Calke Abbey, a place we’d picked from the map at random that turned out to be really nice. We wandered around the grounds and had a picnic lunch next to a lake where I was molested by a very muddy dog whose owner I felt like beating with her walking stick. We added to our list of misdemeanors by climbing gates into private property so we could get back to the car quicker. We had walked the long way round, and rather than go back the way we’d come I convinced Kevin that we should take a short cut. We wound up having to jump not one, but five gates through some aristocrat’s property. We did get seen by employees of the estate but thankfully they didn’t question us and we went on about our business. I’d brought the paddles we’d got in Gran Canaria for a little outdoor fun and we played that for a little while. Kevin has a thing for sheep, so he insisted we play as close to the sheep as possible, which meant trudging through a mine field of sheep piles until he felt we were adequately near enough that the sheep could get a good view of the action. They did watch us for a minute or two and a couple even walked up to us to get a closer view, to Kevin’s great excitement, but then they mostly wandered off and we were left standing in a disgusting field batting our ball back and forth alone. We didn’t even beat our score from Gran Canaria, although we had much more practice then. Personally, I preferred playing on the beach in Spain to playing ankle-deep in muck and grime, but Kevin seemed to love it. 

The rest of the drive was long and boring and full of traffic as we got closer to London, but we eventually made it back by about 8:30 in the evening. However much I’d missed driving, at the end of that day I was glad to be done. Our second holiday had been another smash success, and I could only hope that the next would be even better. Two weeks in Florida when my visa expires—it will either be a great vacation before we come back to England together, or the last hurrah before everything gets complicated.