Bike Route: none
Walking Route: From the cottage at the top of the village to the farm shop at the bottom and back, twice (!), maybe half a mile
Accommodation: Cosy Cottage (Airbnb); host Ashley
Lunch: The garden at our cottage
Dinner: The farm shop cafe's Sunday Roast: pork, beef, Yorkshire pudding, carrots, beans, peas, mashed potatoes, fried potatoes, grilled tomatoes, gravy
We had so many options. There was a mine not too far away, there were beautiful day loops for walking or cycling, Chapel-en-le-Frith was just a few miles away and had some interesting places to visit and restaurants.
But no, we could not get ourselves to head out. It had rained during the night and the air was a little humid, unlike the fresh, cool breeziness we had been experiencing most days.
We ate. We went to the farm shop for lunch supplies. It was Sunday, and the cafe was advertising a Sunday roast, so we made reservations for 15:00 to be sure we would be out of there by closing time at 16:00 so the workers could clean up and go home at a reasonable time. The owner showed us the new wrap on his arm: the cast was off and all was good, no surgery needed, and he was grinning ear to ear.
On the way back, we talked to our sunbathing neighbor, who told us she had bought her cottage during Covid. She had worked in the service industry, as a barista, and the government gave her a full year's wages to compensate for her loss of a job during the pandemic. She used it to buy the cottage, found a new job working remotely for an international hotel company, and was absolutely content with her new, quiet, secure life.
We went back to the cottage with cold drinks, laid down on our nice bed with the windows open and the breeze blowing the curtains in, and read. I finished a book I had started before we left on the trip--we simply haven't had much time to read in the entire six weeks we've been here, and when we do, I fall asleep a few pages in.
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| Looking up the village road to our cottage, just to the right of the silver car in front of the electricity pole. I'm standing near the church, about one-third of the way up the hill. There are cottages on the right side of the road, nothing but fields and a stone fence on the left. |
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| Sheep grazed the field behind the garden of our cottage. |
