h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

There be dragons up on the Pennine moorland. And basking lizards. And a building sized crouching toad. Or at least that's what I see when I look at the tors and boulders up on the hills near here.

It's easy to get very disoriented when walking along the paths over Kinder and Bleaklow. Certainly I've found myself heading confidently off in completely the wrong direction and I thought I knew the countryside round here. The landscape is often swept clean of vegetation leaving nothing but dark peat and enormous stones smoothed by wind and weather into fantastical shapes. Some are well known landmarks, like the Wain Stones on top of Bleaklow that from a certain angle, with your eyes half closed, bear a passing likeness to the profile of two faces sharing a peck of a kiss. Some have been thought to be man-made castles but are just as naturally formed as the rest.

But most of them just look like dinosaurs and lizards, their feet solidly planted in the peat and their heads pointing up at the sky.

Ooo... sure it was Kinder where we were hiking... oo... two and a bidecades ago now, I guess Sdly never get chance to go to such loverly landscapes thesedays

Might well have been Kinder you were on, all those paths up from places like Edale and Hayfield are very, very popular.

We have very similar rocks, (on the other side of the Peak district from you) The most famous formation locally would be the Winking Man, which from a certain angle on the main road below, looks like a face in profile, with a gap for his eye, and as you drive slowly along, suddenly it winks at you. It used to amuse us incredibly as children,

here's a photo of it:

http://s0.geograph.org.uk/geophotos/01/40/21/1402148_68add728.jpg

I really miss hiking... If it was an area we hiked, and the name sounds really familiar, it may have been even hen I was in the scouts, or perhaps doing the D of E, when at school I doubt I've got the endurance for walking I had back then though.. all my wekends were spent cycling, canoeing, or hiking, and we occasionaly did mammoth cycling weekends, and/or hiking thirty or miles in a day... Heck... soemtimes we were even sober when doing it

A few years ago I got terribly lost on Stanton Moor. We'd gone out to The Nine Ladies Stone Circle, the path to it is very clearly marked and short.

We ended up taking the long way round, on the way back to the car. It was a blisteringly hot day and by the time we reached the road and we realised not only had we ran out of liquids, but still had quite a trek down it. I can't remember how long it took us to get back to the car but it was well over an hour and all we had to drink when we got there was a bottle of very warm cherryade. Still, better than nowt.

[Amy P]