Attempts at discovery; eventually defeated by owls. Ends in a meal.

On a rare joint day off, my illustrious partner in exploration and I travelled into darkest (leafiest) Derbyshire and discovered: the Peak District! Luckily, the natives had installed cable cars (but, unluckily, hadn't solved my rather panicky fear of heights). These were good for hauling us high into the sky.


The heights led to some rather spectacular views and the chance to ponce around with the saturation settings on my camera! Always the cornerstone of any good day out.

Later on, we discovered this previously unreported Devil Owl. It pretended to be a children's maze, but when we realised that a pair of averagely-intelligent degree-holders couldn't figure it out, we deduced that it is actually probably a portal to hell or similar and was probably best left undiscovered.
Note the wrath in its mosaic eyes! Clearly, this is not a creature to trifle with.

We did like, however, the benevolent Grandfather Carved Out Of A Tree, which we found a little way away, up a very steep path. His whole family were there, but I only saw fit to take pictures of the grandfather, probably because I was envious of his luxuriant beard and manly physique. Lots of things we discovered were up steep paths, now I think about it, which may explain why the area has gone unmapped for so many years.

Other things which involved the steep, and the steps, were the many (pair of) caves, one of which was hidden deep in the hillside and was quite wet, and the other of which was hidden in Middle Earth and was very fucking wet indeed (also quite dark and scary).



Soon after we finished discovering (got bored of) these 17th century caves, we travelled back down the mountain in a handcart (cable car) and ate fish and chips and bread and dip by the river. A fine feast to mark the end of a fine day's graft at the the fine job of discovering tourist attractions in the heart of Matlock! A round of applause wouldn't be inappropriate, I feel.