Went to physio last night, which was by far the least painful visit. This inspired confidence to go to the Peak District or Shropshire for my first proper walk since, er, the last one. It must have been at least a month.
Requirements of the walk:
Maximum chance of seeing a cloud inversion.
Fair amount of ascent with little horizontal mileage as I am unsure how my knee will be and how ankles are ( this is the first walk I have done in a while in boots).
Exposure to fog to improve my micro-navigation.
Woke up this morning, and checked out the weather. The fog (with its cloud inversion possibilities) and closeness of big hills to Edale was the winning choice. So off I went.
Got to Edale car park at 09:45 and started walking just after 10. Crossing Grindsbrook, I met with an ‘older’ walker and we chatted all the way to the top of the brook. Felt embarrassed as I could just about keep up, he was a true mountain goat hoping rocks all the way up, whereas I was in full both handed scramble mode.
We were both disappointed when we reached the top of the brook as the cloud top appeared 100 metres or more above our heads. We agreed that an inversion was probably not going to happen and went our own ways. I started walked eastwards along the edge and after about 20 minutes, I notices blue skys appearing. This surely means the clouds are lowering. Quickly through the rucksack off and got the camera out. Not much. Just seeing the top of cloud a bit above my head but it quickly rose again.
10 minutes later however, the inversion happened. For about 10 minutes I could see for miles including the top of Grindslow Knoll popping its head over the cloud. This is my first inversion and I was amazed. The cloud rised and lowered many times over the walk so I saw many inversions. I have also learnt that you should try to position yourself between the sun and the inversion to see a broken spectre, but that wasn’t possible today.
With all this excitement, I forgot about my knee. Which must be a good sign, cuz it normally reminds me by… hurting. Nothing so far. Finally after about 1.5 mile of edge walking, I descended back to edale. During the descent, I felt only discomfort, no pain though I did have the knee support on and used the Lekis greatly. Looks like my next walk on Boxing Day might happen.
Finally, I had to once again cross Grindsbrook and the water running over rocks inspired me to try some creative photography, but lack of skills failed miserably. Must learn how to use Shutter Priority mode as all my attempts were way over exposed. Must try harder!