Castleton

2nd to 4th October 2015

Our first visit of the year to one of our favourite sites – Castleton Caravan Club site.

Almost always fully booked at weekends, we had to book this one months ago, long before we started looking at statics and other caravans.  Not being able to visit Castleton (and a couple of other places) is one of the reasons we decided against getting a static.

Friday

Nice and sunny today, and we chose a sunny pitch, only to discover it was too hot to sit outside, even with out of date sun tan lotion on!

Lots of big caravans in our part of the site, but we can hold our own in this caravan.  Our first caravan, the Abi Sprinter, was about half the length!

Apart from it being in a good area for walking, the main attraction of this site is how near it is to Castleton and its six pubs.  We headed straight for them!

The Castle Inn and the Cheshire Cheese are our favourites, and we booked a table for dinner on Saturday at the first.

But tonight it was dinner in the caravan (the temperature dropped too much for a barbecue).  There isn’t really anywhere to put a microwave in this caravan so we are having to cook proper food again.

After dinner we headed back into the village for  more drinks. We like the Cheshire Cheese as its a very old pub dating back to the 1700s, and they have a good selection of beers and board games.  It also seems to have had a bit of a refurb. 

The names of all the landlords have been added to the beams over the years

Saturday

A completely different day today, weather-wise, with mist and low cloud instead of blue skies and sunshine.

Undaunted, we decided to have a car free day and got a bus to the northern end of Stanage Edge, the plan being to walk to Hathersage and then get another bus back to Castleton.

Stanage Edge is very popular with rock climbers and we saw lots today.  Not great weather for photography, but a couple of pics to set the scene.

Got to Hathersage around 2pm and had tea and cake and a look around the shops.  Picked up an impressive geocache just before the village

Then a very hot bus ride back to Castleton (heating on full).

Back at the site we discovered our bird feeder on the ground, and a couple of suspects caught red handed?

They turned out to be not guilty.  A man in a neighbouring caravan fingered the real culprit…a grey squirrel.  Oh well, squirrels have to eat too. D caught him a few times shinning up to pole to get at the treats (the squirrel not the man next door)

An excellent dinner in the Castle Inn, which wasn’t very busy.  Probably because everybody was in other pubs watching England get knocked out of the rugby world cup.

Only six pints for D this weekend,he usually drinks much more when we visit Castleton!

Sunday

An uneventful journey home listening to the Archers.

Coming soon…

Three nights in Ravenglass, another of our favourite sites.  Looking forward to some great sunsets…