Hill climbed, voice lost again!

On Saturday I was feeling quite a bit better, and had a pretty normal speaking voice.
I even managed to make a phone call to a friend.

Sunday dawned and the idea was to get a bit of exercise ahead of our holiday in Alberta (which is looming).
All through January I had been meaning to get more exercise.
The wretched virus made this hard to do.

Yesterday there was an opportunity to go on a walk with the Peak District Mines Historical Society .
We went to look at the remains of the copper mining industry at Ecton in north Staffordshire.
Ian and I arrived at the starting point with plenty of time for the 10.00 start.


There were nine of us and two small dogs.
We started looking at the remains at the bottom of the valley, and then set off for the hilltop.

All along we were accompanied by a couple of young men driving muckspreaders up and down the road.



At one point I leapt off the roadway to get out of the way of a muckspreader, and chose the wrong verge.

My jacket beacame impaled on a strand of the barbed wire fence.

There wasn't time to do anything but stay put.

The rear wheel (fortunately not mucky) just brushed my backpack.

No-one further back down the road had the presence of mind to record my near scrape.


We had a good time, apparently missing some outstanding views.
All we saw was mist.


As we started to walk up a steep bit of road (shortly after my encounter), I could tell that my voice was going.

The rest of the day all I had was a whisper.
There were some wonderful things to see in the gloom, and I took a couple of pictures to add to my inspirational images.


This shows one of the walls in the valley.
Unusually, this one was composed of nearly all red stones.