Freaking out on the Peaks

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As regular readers might remember, Pete and I attend the three monthly or so gatherings with Freaks in the Peaks. Last weekend’s took place in Hathersage, and given the weather forecast, and Pete’s bad back, I was quite reluctant to attend, to be honest. But he really wanted to go, and so we left Hull at about 2.15 on Friday afternoon, with a friend in the back seat.

The journey down was fine – snow started falling as we got to the M62, but the roads were clear enough, and although it was much heavier by the time we got to Sheffield, again everything under the wheels had been gritted and/or salted, so I wasn’t worried. Then we took the turning that IOS Maps (yes, I know, I know) told us to head for Hathersage, about ten miles on.

Dear lord … The road rapidly got more and more snowy, no cars at all in sight, it went up and up, and occasionally it went round hair pin bends, and I was really quite unhappy with it. The blizzards and the drifting snow made it almost impossible to see the road, and Pete was using Google maps on his phone to tell me where the next bend was. By the time we realised that we had clearly taken the wrong road, it would have been as difficult to turn back as it was to go on, so go on we did. Thankfully we saw very few cars – thankfully, because it was quite hard to keep straight. At one point, with a kind of Sods’ Law inevitability, another vehicle was approaching me *at the same time* as there were two pedestrians on the side of the road. By now, I’d given up with the automatic, and was using first and second gears on the Saab, so I just eased my foot slowly off the accelerator and held my breath. No pedestrians were damaged, nor anyone/anything else. Coming down this horrible peak was even worse than going up it, but at least I knew we were nearly there. I was getting P to count down the remaining distance, and once we got to 2 miles out, I stopped really panicking, because I knew we could walk it from that point.

But sadly, it spoiled the weekend for me – it kept snowing and snowing, and I was really worried about the journey home, so felt quite anti-social and non dancey. My fault and nobody else’s. The journey home was completely uneventful too …

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