Our crisp flavour experiment completed, the rest of our drive to Ingleton went by without too much trouble. Ingleton was the choice only because we kind of favoured the Seed Hill B&B that we had stayed in last year on our way down to Barry & Michelle’s wedding. The breakfast was the biggest, bestest, hangover busting, fried all-the-works breakfasts we’ve had here in the UK. 2 sausages, a pile of well-cooked bacon, fried egg, tomato, mushrooms, baked beans and that artery clogging favourite – fried bread. Breakfast in Ingleton and you need nothing else until BBQ time in Bamford…. except the 3 or 4 pints along the way of course…

Thursday night we had dinner in the local pub and stayed to listen to the pub quiz. I say listen, because there was not a single question that we had any hope of being able to answer… After a huge dinner with the best of British on offer, we sidled out onto the pavement for a little walk in search of another pub with a pool table.

The weekend was great fun. We arrived in Bamford after meandering all day through every picturesque village you ever imagined existed. We came armed with sausages, lamb burgers and enough buns to feed an army – and we set about to wait at the pub for our hosts to return from work.

It was nice to see Barry & Michelle. It has been just over a year in fact since our last visit, and since they’ll be moving to Leeds this weekend, it was to be our last weekend in the Peak District for some time. We did a walk on Saturday up Win Hill and then down and around the dam before stopping at a lovely pub just outside of Bamford. Supposed to be a short leisurely walk, instead it was a reasonably long leisurely walk – but as usual the excellent company far outweighed any small inconvenience of blisters or need for second lungs, or hips, or knees…

Sunday as our last bid to the area we decided to hang about and visit one of the Caverns in Castleton. We queued for close to 2 hours, then marched down 105 stairs below the earth, jumped on a tiny little row boat in the dark and freezing temperature and were led along an old lead mine tunnel towards the cavern. There were 8 stalactites somewhere up in the distance and our guide was awed to tell us they were over 50,000 years old… Me, I couldn’t help sniggering about the fact that there were only ‘8 stalactites – I even counted them myself just to make sure they hadn’t missed one… 8? only 8? I’m used to seeing caves with hundreds if not thousands of the things…. but 8? As I said, the guide was almost reverential about them… I was more impressed with him and his awe than the 8 objects of attention, but anyway….

Our choice of cavern was between Speedwell and the Devils Arse. Because Barry & Michelle had visited the Devils Arse Cavern previously, and didn’t have many positive comments about it, and they hadn’t seen Speedwell – we figured we could discover it together, one last final touristy thing to do in the worlds second busiest National Park.

As we left I heard Michelle say to Barry “I think I preferred the Devils Arse”…

It pretty much sums up our feelings. Doubt we’d do it again, even without a queue to get in.

Our drive home was uneventful. Whereas on our previous trip last July it took us about 7 hours with traffic and extreme heat to get home, we made it back to Glasgow in 4.5 hours which included a ‘gas station and junk food’ stop. I was well impressed.

Maybe we could get to Leeds in under 4 hours next time?