Castleton in the rain

6th to 8th November 2014

Back after a break of three weeks, it’s almost as if we waited for the bad weather to return!  We’ve been really lucky with the weather this year, but it had to run out sooner or later, and it ran out this weekend in Derbyshire.

Actually, not a weekend.  A Thursday/Friday trip, due to the Castleton CC site being fully booked every Saturday for the rest of the year.  A victim of it’s own success.

Thursday

The site was pretty empty when we got there, so plenty of pitches to choose from.  We’ve been here a few times and usually opt for the same area, but we decided to try a pitch at the back of the site this time.  There aren’t really any bad pitches here.

Castleton is only a short walk from the site.  There aren’t many shops in the village and most were shut, so there wasn’t much to see.  Instead we had a couple of drinks in a couple of the pubs, followed by dinner.  A mix up with our Tastecard at Ye Olde Nags Head meant we had to pay full price.  Apparently there is another Ye Olde Nags Head in nearby Edale!

Friday

It rained quite a bit in the night, but when we got up it was relatively okay, so we set off for a walk up Win Hill (462 metres). At the top lies Win Hill Pike, locally known as the Pimple

 

A couple of heavy showers to start, followed by a spell of continuous heavy rain,  and a race against time to get the waterproofs on!!

We made it to the top…

 

Not a good day for pics, so not many here!

Back at the site we put our soaking clothing in the very handy drying room and settled down in the caravan.  We had to wait until about 5.30 for the rain to stop but we got to the Cheshire Cheese Inn just in time for their earlybird special menu.  Unfortunately we didn’t fancy anything on it, so ended up paying full price for two massive meals.  We didn’t really need the bread basket side order that J asked for, but you can’t have fish and chips without it!

As we were finishing our meal a massively overweight couple waddled in, and as the only remaining table was a tiny one in the corner right next to us, we decided to leave before the embarrassment of watching them wedge themselves in.

There are six pubs in the village.  We’ve been in four of them.  One we have never been able to get in because it is always full, and one we have always avoided because we thought it didn’t look very nice…the Peaks Inn.  It’s had a makeover, so we decided to give it a go and it turned out to be really nice.  That’s at least five good pubs out of six in the village now.   It amazes us how such a small place can have 6 busy pubs no matter what time of year

A quick game of scrabble back at the caravan, then bed (D lost again)

Saturday

Just managed to pack everything away before it started raining, then a long journey home.  We can’t recall ever travelling with the caravan on a Saturday before. We would certainly have remembered the huge volumes of traffic!

Coming soon…

We are hoping to get at least one more trip in before Christmas, weather permitting, and the frontrunner at the moment is The Croft, Hawkshead.