For our birthday weekend, we decided to do something different and challenging. We just didn’t think that would consist of an 18 mile walk. But walk we did in the Peaks district near Sheffield in England. We walked til we literally dropped, and then walked some more!
We started off by taking a long bus trip up to Sheffield then another local bus to our final destination, Castleton, in the middle of the Peaks district. Early Saturday morning, we met with our guide who was going to attempt to teach Kim to read a map (ok, me too). But this is no ordinary map reading. This is the kind that hikers use to walk through unchartered territories and we wanted to get the skills to go out on our own anywhere we like.
So after a briefing and an explanation of what seemed to be fairly reasonable map symbols, we started off on our walk! And most of it was uphill! We saw some gorgeous sights on our trek and some really cute sheep 
We even saw the supposed grave of Little John from Robin Hood. Oh, and Robin Hood’s supposed cave too!
We took turns in navigating for the group and made our way through the hills and onto some cliffs and then some more walking for good measure. After 9 miles and 9 hours walking, we were wrecked. Completely. By the time we got back to the hostel, we were asleep on our feet and although we were starving, sleep was the only thing on our minds!
The next day, we made our way up more hills on a different route to Lose Hill. We walked along a long ridge between hills and we breathed in the most beautiful countryside views! Although I thought that reading these maps would be a breeze, I was so wrong. It’s much more difficult than I thought and took a great deal of concentration to keep track of where we were. By the end of the two days, we were exhausted both mentally and physically.
So, next thing to do is try out our new skills… Just have to find a place to go!
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