Day Three

We started our third day at the Bookshop in Brierlow Bar. It's not only England's largest bargain bookstore, also the highest at over 1,000 feet. We whiled away some time looking through the shelves, flicking through pages whilst the rain came down outside. I do enjoy spending time in bookshops and love how me and the boy never ever look at the same sections! When the rain didn't desist, we realised we were going to have to find something out of the elements to entertain us.

We headed to Castleton and went to Treak Cliff Cavern. Treak Cliff Hill is the only place in the world where Blue John Stone occurs naturally. As I have mentioned before, I do love Blue John Stone, so thought it was only right to actually go and see where is came from. Well, what I wasn't expecting was a personal tour - it was just me and my husband! The tour guide was amazing and told us so much about the mining cavern and the natural cave beyond. It was so beautiful in there - from the fossils, to the Blue John and then the stalactites and stalagmites. Simple beautiful.

Now I must confess to being a little scared of Caves - something slightly unnerving about them, a thing from my childhood. But every time I have been in one as an adult I have enjoyed it, if I could avoid my mind thinking how far below ground we are. Anyway, I admitted this to our tour guide and when we were in the natural cave, he asked if I wanted to test myself and how scared I really was of caves. I nervously agreed, wondering what he might do! Then he turned off all the lights! And you know what, it really wasn't bad at all! I survived another cave!

It was a great tour and such a beautiful place to visit. We were also give two pieces of Blue John Stone by our Tour guide to take home from their spoil pile which was very lovely and one of the pieces is massive!

On our way down out of the cavern we were greeted by a line of sheep which did make me smile - it was like they were waiting for the next tour!

Then it was time for lunch - we went to The Three Roofs in Castleton which we know serves good Coffee but now we know they do very good food too. A tuna sandwich for me and a BLT for the boy.

After lunch, despite the weather we were desperate for a walk so we went to find the Ox Stones. It was eerily misty walking across Burbage Moor. I felt like I was in Wuthering Heights, just with Jeans and Walking Boots! We eventually found the Stones which are truly amazing shapes due to the wind erosion. We spent an age up on the Moor enjoying the sheer solitude watching the rain clouds in the distance. We climbed the Stones, hide in the crevices from each other and just enjoyed being outside. Burbage Moor is definitely a great place to walk around.

After we came down from the Moor, we felt we really wanted to walk a little more, so we headed to Stanton Moor with the aim of finding the Nine Ladies Standing Stone Circle.

Boy did we take an age to find them - Stanton Moor is so vast. But find them we did. The Nine Ladies are a small early Bronze Age stone circle traditionally believed to depict nine ladies turned to stone as a penalty for dancing on Sunday. The moor contains at least 70 barrows as well as stone circles, ancient enclosures and standing stones - such a great place to walk. We were up there for about 3 hours in the end.

Just as were we leaving the Moor, the sun had started to set which made the sky such an amazing colour. We headed back to the campsite with weary feet but a lot of satisfaction for how far we had walked that day. We fell asleep very quickly that night!