Eyam Moor, Abney and Stoke Ford

This walk was done on 12 May 2011
Distance: 8 miles
Weather: Overcast with sunny spells and showers (typical may weather)

I picked this as a start of the summer campaign because I had not been to Eyam (the plague village) for years.The walk was taken from here www.grabyourboots.com So far it's the only one I've taken off the net that I followed.

I arrange to do this walk with Jo who kept a little suprise from me until the morning of the walk. We were taking a dog with us, it was a Yorkshire terrier of no size called Tia (hopefully Jo will provide a photo). Now I don't mind dogs but as it's legs were about as long as my hand I excepted to be carrying it after a couple of miles, I had visions of it been like one of those posh handbag dogs with it's head poking out of my day sack slobbering down the back of my neck. How wrong could I be.

So we set off not to long into the walk along a track we came across a couple of older gents who, once the general greetings were swapped asked where we were. Now I always carry a Ordnance survey map. In the past I've had to use photocopy's and they make the job of knowing where you are far to difficult so I will not go out with out a OS map.
These two gents pulled a PC printout map out of their pocket and pointed to where they thought they were. They were not there. I then showed them were they were about 3 km north.
Thinking that they made the mistake due to not using a proper map. The next few sentences made that thought fallacious. As they explained where they had started and the route they had taken in the time they stated made me realise that they were been guided by Lady Luck, who was having her work cut out for her. I pointed them in the right direction and left them in her hands.

The walk then took us down towards Abeny crossing some beautiful streams. Just before the village we crossed a field containing some horses. I do not get on with horses and horses know this. They were nice horses with foals which I thought might be an issuse with said dog( who was still going like the duracell bunny wired to the mains) the horses and foals went for a run and little Tia followed suit, once the retractable lead had ran out she did her best to drag me along with her. I dont know what was running though her head but the smallest foal had a body mass of at least 200 times hers I don't know if she really was hunting them. In my mind just another example of dog's intelligence.

We then climbed out of the valley and across Eyam moor back to the car, down into the village to have a beer. At first we could not find a pub that side of the village, it was dryer than a Sunday in wales we decided to go else where when we spotted the miners arms and a beer was had.
Now back to little miss short legs who must have covered twice the distance on the walk as the both of us. While at the pub we were sitting outside, the sun deciding to stop out for a bit. She just did not stop running around tying herself around the benches and been a total magnet to all dog lovers there. Got back into the car where she promply crashed out for the journey back.

So as a first walk this was a good start, did not get lost, did not end up in mud up to our shoulders and not to taxing. You maybe glad or not that I took no pic's on this walk, Jo has a few I may try to get off her to add to this later.