Walk with me: Ilam, Derbyshire, UK

Setting off at Ilam Park in the Derbyshire Peak District.

It’s a small, stately home owned by The National Trust, with lots of countryside, Dove Dale and hill fort history.
The weather is dry and pretty mild but it’s very muddy.

I’ve let them get forward of me for a picture. They are talking ten to the dozen and Mia will keep up an avid conversation all the way round. I think they were discussing music when I dropped back. We are on the look out for other dogs as ours, Aoife, could get the Darwin Award for despising her own species.

Over the river and into the fields

My darling, the geomicrobiologist, uses the British geological survey app to map the walking paths, of course. He’s fighting a losing battle with me and Mia. It’s like herding cats 😂. He has a need of a map, where I have the thrill of navigating like the salmon and getting lost and found again. Mia’s inherited a tendency to off road and a desire to do what she’s told she shouldn’t.

Here he’s pointing the way “make it so!” Style.
Here’s the outcome:

Mia’s providing the musical accompaniment with a rendition of Amy Winehouse:

Being all ‘rockstar’ hand to camera:

And interjecting “what’s ‘Tanqueray’?,” (Jon answers for us both ... I had no idea ... another bit of song) “what’s ‘Stella’?” (More singing) “Roger Moore, is that James Bond?” ... etc.

Followed by a hilarious & inappropriate conversation about “dogging” just because we passed a parked car in the middle of nowhere and it’s the workings of a 17 year old mind.
I remark that I saw a lot of people doing that at Morrison’s this morning (innocently parking their cars 😜) “yeah! We know what you’re up to”
😂😂😂

We get into a jokey semantic debate about labelling, and perhaps you’re innocently having sex in your car and someone with a dog happens along and you get labelled as doggers and dogees... “Yeah. We know what you’re up to.” We joke.

Approaching a very Bronté esque house up a steep hill now. It’s alone in a beautiful and bleak landscape with lichen encrusted walls all around and spectacular views.

(Now, driving home, We’re driving up a 1:6 country lane as I write. Goodness! )

Back the way we came as onward was through a field of horses and Mia can’t abide horses. She used to be an amazing rider. I’ve seen her keep her seat for 6 or 7 bucks and rears on a joyous Hafflinger, frolicking his way into a ride. But about 3 years ago she got kicked in the head and run to ground by a cob who suddenly lost the plot and she has entirely lost her trust.
I've only just begun to be able to walk in a field with a horse and I’m not sure I could ride again either.

Back past a lovely collage in a dusky country lane, with what sounded like someone playing piano from inside, the lights all bright in the windows

and the first snowdrops littering the banks.

Fish & chips on the way home after collecting Yuki, who’d been making a dramatic play with her friends all afternoon, a modern version of Romeo & Juliet where Juliet survives and Romeo [who is called Oliver] is shot by the police.
They've been climbing and helped out at a birthday party in a residential home for disabled people. She’s come home to find another friend in the kitchen, visiting our Freya (13) and they are living it large and loudly (BTS Korean pop).
I’ve headed for the sanctuary of my tiny office.

Tucked away here, in our tiny smallholding! (

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Which looks like the Somme C1940 right now but will look like this again in May.