Road trip – Grimsby, Peak district

Another weekend with beautiful weather, so it was once again time for another road trip. This time to Harry’s place up north in Grimsby and surrounding region.

Our initial plan was to go to Scotland,butspending only 1 day in Scotland would not be sufficient, therefore we settled for Peak district. It was so worth it!!!

Day 1

We

[Harry driving, Karan and Asad playing scrabble, and me navigating and dj-ing as usual] set of Friday evening, nice long drive to Grimsby, the weather was lovely and the sky was breathtaking.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvxOT5HwkLw]

Touchdown at 11 pm, we were greeted by Harry’s parents and lovely dinner. Their home is beautiful and the master bedroom is 4 times the size of my room ;)

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After a goodnight’s sleep, Saturday morning’s breakfast was uncle’s famous parathas!!! yuuummy.

We all get ready and head off for Peak district around noon. 2 hours later, in a place called Dovedale, we start walking on the Peak district route. Beautiful landscape, hills, sheep, families with children and dogs, playing, laughing, having a great day out.

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Harry and Asad being the anti-social couple, set off on their walk ahead of Karan and yours truly. So I really have no idea what they did for the next 3 hours. They said they arrived at the end of the 3 mile walk at a cafe and waited for us there, but who knows??.

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As for us, we decided to enjoy the walk and absorb the beauty and vastness of this amazing place. The trek involved walking 3 miles along a river in a valley surrounded by hills and peaks.

We climbed the 2nd highest peak (950 ft) in the region, almost to the top, ok half way ;) , stepped over famous ‘stepping stones’ in the river, got wet in the water, tried different ways to take pictures, balancing on tiny stones, hanging from trees, sitting in mud, hanging over the river with only Karan’s hand to support me, just to mention a few.

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The route had several caves, dense forests on either side on the hills with an amazingly picturesque river in the middle. The sound of flowing water was more than relaxing, it made you wish that you lived here and could listen to the water while you slept every night. Along the river there were several tiny waterfalls, I guess man made dams, to store water, or to reduce the speed of the flowing water. The river was packed with ducks all along the route.

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUg-8sIqscE]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iY_gTtg_i1Y]

One of the interestingly weird things along our walk was ‘coin trees’. Very old trees, chopped off, but completely covered with copper coins to form beautiful patterns. We tried moving the coins, but they were jammed into the trees bark, and had been there for quite a few years.

On the way out, we had amazing handmade ice-cream, mmmm… Brazilian chocolate and Caramel crunch. I am writing this as we are driving back to Grimsby…
UK has so many places to visit, see and explore. On a beautiful day, with an outing like Peak district why would you fly off to Barcelona or Portugal for the weekend? There is so much unexplored beauty right here…

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Day 2

Nothing planned for today, except a visit to the famous Humber bridge in Hull. Took a few quick shots and drove back to London.