England Outside the City

Over the weekend, I had the wonderful opportunity to hike around a bit of the area outside Manchester. It's a rather nice pastime here to hike around the rolling hills, splotches of woodland, historic buildings, and sheep - and luckily the North Cheshire Concert Band has a monthly(?) ritual of planning short (5 miles or so) hikes.

This weekend we started off at Lyme Park, near Stockport. People may recognize the area as it is where they filmed part of (the recent) Pride and Prejudice. I must confess that I have seen the film, although the space in my mind has been commandeered by recent musical phrases in preparation of my recital (I know - lousy excuse!); but it wasn't beyond my knowledge to understand why the women in the group were looking for Mr. Darcy. Those not taking a fancy towards him (my eyes were scanning for Miss Bennet) were entreated to ask how a 5 mile hike which ended where it began seemed to only venture uphill.

And uphill we went. It's quite encouraging (albeit physically tiring) when Catherine is racing towards a summit, and I would expect to gain energy from this. Of course, after a slightly tired Catherine reaches "almost" the top, to find out it is indeed "almost" but not "quite", the legs just seem to try to turn around. This was the first 1-2 miles.

After that, we slowly proceeded downhill, moving past grazing sheep (England - especially compared to the US - has quite lax rules governing hikers. As long as they stay on the trail, people can venture in and out of private farmland, and zones that would surely be off-limits in the US - like airfields!), and quickly descended past the earth into the mud. There was TONS of it, whole fields digested into a thick ooze which threatened to capture our shoes and nibble on our trousers. I remained unscathed until I stepped in (evidently) a hold and a spurt of mud flew up, injuring the bottom half of my leg. Healing would have to wait until we returned home, and only after a tumble in the washer.

After looking up at the beautiful hills and countryside (it really is amazing to look out and see green fields broken up by fences and hedgerows. I really hope to post some pictures soon), we gradually made our ascent up the final peak, culminating at the Gatehouse. The trek was arduous to say the least, but finally making it was surely worth the effort. From the peak, you could look down on Stockport, Manchester (easily recognizable by Beetham Tower), and even as far away as Anglesey, the island making up the Western end of Wales! Clouds obscured the mountains, but the panorama was breathtaking.

From there, we descended past the estate, returning to the car park, where plans were laid for the pub trip.