Braving the Dovedale Trail

Morning dawned misty and cool along the Amber Valley, a former mining district just southeast of the Peak District.  Evening at the Farm Hotel had passed with comfortable ease, from drinks with the owner of a pub Saturday night to a decent buffet breakfast to start our Sunday.

 

  

Flicking though the local outdoor guides, the nearby Dovedale Walk looked appealing: One of the most beautiful limestone dales in Britain, a variety of scenery with the ever-changing River Dove, the steep limestone cliffs and spires, the rare woodlands species and its many caves.  The trailhead was in the nearby village of Ilam, near a rolling park, a stately home, and a looping bend of the Manifold River.

 

Given that it was a nice spring weekend, though, families were out in force by 10 am and the narrow roads into the village clogged with traffic.  We dropped anchor near the trailhead and walked the rest of the way in, along the tidy homes and past the stone church to Ilam Hall, a once-fashionable mansion converted to youth-hostel by the National Trust.  ‘tea and a beer, then off into the hills.

  

It’s lambing time in the northern meadows, sheep all across the trail the wound up above the roads and traffic.  There was a steady line of walkers, some with dogs and sticks, others lifting children over the stiles, all sloshing along the muddy slopes.  It made (my) balance tricky, but  the rocky upslope alternate path was longer and steeper, so we stayed to the pastures and took things easy.

  

The Dovedale Valley is about a mile onward, a frothing  river flowing through steep-sided limestone canyons.  The first attraction is the Stepping Stones, a sequence of flat rocks providing a well-known river crossing.  There’s a bit of a queue to wait, but the rocks themselves, flat-topped and each about a foot apart, don’t seem to be much of an obstacle.

 

Or so I thought.  Crossing the first three, they were a bit more rough, muddy, slippery, and tipped than I’d realised.  My ankle is similarly rough, wobbly, and tipped, and there was no easy way to go forward or back.

Stuck, I beckoned my w.wezen back for an assist (who thought I only wanted to take a picture). With a steady hand to hold, the crossing was done, eliciting  embarrassing applause from the group queued on the other bank.  Age and hesitation, but falling into the water would have been worse.

  

Onwards, up the valley through rock formations, weirs, and little named settings (Lovers Leap).  The whole three miles up to Milldale was more than we had time for, but it was nice to get back up into the hills and alongside the streams. 

The further ridges and peaks were drawing venturesome teens and booted hikers, and it would be fun to scale for the views some other time.

Chilling with the snowdrops

Today was the day for submitting our Technical File to our regulator, but a couple of key bits were still missing.  The Notified Body was gracious about accepting a 12-hour slip, but it was difficult for me to step back and accept that we needed to accept a delay.

In research, always a first time for a new technology or product category, we only have best guesses of when things will be done. A board layout takes a month instead of a week; a clinical finding requires an investigation; a failed test necessitates a redesign.
It’s always something, and thus rare to hit a milestone on time (although we always hit them in sequence).

Nonetheless, when I push myself to meet a committed deadline, I hate to give it up.  When my Body Pump instructor says to give it my all for another eight presses, I don’t have an extra four in me at the end.  If I say I’ll stop at the next turn-off, I know its irritating to ask to go one more stop.   Similarly, if co-workers put in extra effort to finish on-time, I not right for me to slip the deadline.

 

This time, though, the job was huge, the delay small, and I’d had my say abut the situation.  It was time to step back and take a walk in the woodlands.

It’s snowdrop season in the UK, the first certain breath of spring.  The white flowers bloom in forests in February, and it’s been a couple of years since our last visit to Welford Park to see the display.

  

It was chilly, wet, fairly deserted at mid-week.  Admission still seems steep at £6 per head.  ‘But the forests and grounds are lovely, and it’s a nice fugue to lose myself in the fresh air and flowers for a few hours.

Tomorrow, we finish.

   

Thames walk from Marlow

Easter Monday, once a chance to catch up during the bank holiday, now a day that I religiously take away from my desk.  The coming week will be a busy road trip, so it seemed appropriate to balance with a quiet walk along the Thames in the first days of spring.

  

The light was great, the boats were out, and lots of stately mansions and old churches to study.  The trail was muddy from the weekends rains, slippery and clodding to shoes.  No matter, we skirted the puddles, clinging to tree trunks and swinging along the edges of the path. 

  

40 minutes out, it became apparent that there was no ‘next village’ anywhere in sight before sunset, so we turned back for traditional pub grub and beer (gin and tonic for the heartier souls).

More pictures, of course, on my Flickr page

Morning along the River Cam

We’re wrapping up revenue and budget forecasts, following on strong investor interest at last week’s pitch event.  I did a rough spreadsheet to show how a strong product pipeline, flat operating costs,  a modest assumptions about market share could spin millions in annual revenue within three years.  It’s a strong investment case, but only credible if we make our numbers robust and consistent, our assumptions clear and well-founded.

So I met with our financial lead in Cambridge to spend a few hours checking the data.  Then, with the evening and the next morning free, my w.wezen and I spent time wandering the cobbled streets, enjoying meals, drinks, and conversation by the punts, and walking the riverbanks and fields at sunrise.

 

The river is running high, water making Grantchester marshy and submerging  sidewalks in the Fens.  But it’s a clear, mild morning for December, with time to visit the Orchard for scones and coffee. 

 

Quieter this time of year, the deck chairs sit empty and flapping in the wind beneath trees dormant and brown.  There were a surprising number of apples still clinging to the branches, perhaps waiting for the first hard freeze to fall.

The walk was framed by early sunlight slanting through the trees, the sky reflected in metal-blue tones by River Cam.  Desultory ducks drifted past, barely bothering a glance.

   

Except for the wind, there wasn’t a sound along the riverbanks, the village as quietly contemplative as it’s citizens.