Diary: April, 22

Continued.. 4/4

1st

The start of the month, I waked just before sunrise in a wrecked tent, wet, and freezing with cold. I'd pitched my broken tent half a mile outside Edale, but only a few feet away from the Transpenine way footpath.

I was so distraught from such an uncomfortable night that I strewed the remains of my tent onto a barbed wire fence and walked away from Edale, along the Transpenine way North West toward Kinder Scout peak.

Inevitably confronted by sheep…

Further along the Pennine way I stopped to cook breakfast, tinned Macaroni Cheese.

After passing a farm house owned by the National Trust, the journey became more scenic, so I took out my DSLR camera from my rucksack and began to snap pictures…

Here is my gallery of my ascent to Kinder Scout summit, click on pictures to expand to higher quality resolution.

Kinder Scout was a short and steady ascent and easy to navigate, I would recommend this peak for any walker starting out climbing mountains. Below is a picture of the mountains that align Mam Tor, just over the horizon is Castleton and Hope.

Below the mountain is a train line connecting Sheffield and Manchester, at Edale station I boarded the train to Sheffield. I collected my tent from the barded wire fence and packed it carefully inside my rucksack, because some shelter is better than none. Before I got onto the train, I stopped at the Pennypot café and purchased some food and drink, paying with my debit card that refused to work yesterday.

Arriving at Sheffield, I exited the station only to go back into the station to find the Sheffield tap, what a fantastic selection of real ales. One after the other the weird people came in, one guy entered with a teddy bear and a laptop, another a woman who I recognised from a Facebook friend request, which I blogged about just a few months ago.

The head barman was gay, and so I believed the attentive security guard, who I assumed to be his boyfriend. I have no qualms with being associative to gay people, providing they don't put out their sexuality to children, or get in peoples faces with it; such behaviour is frowned upon for heterosexual people, so why should we expect less of them or any other sexuality. BTW, I detest drag queens; they are everything that is wrong about gender identity.

Whilst at the pub, I booked a National Express ticket to Glasgow, not realising until after I booked the ticket what a hectic journey I'd just purchased. I had caught the train to Sheffield because I wanted to stay away from Manchester, but the ticket took me to Manchester via Leeds to make the connection to Glasgow. Leaving me to piss three hours in the pub before my first connection arrived at Sheffield bus station.

Sheffield bus station was full of monsters harassing people who did not want to acknowledge their intimidations. The national express stand was deadpan, being there was no way to check if a bus had arrived or one had just left. Leeds bus station was uncomfortable, and Manchester bus station was rude, when the coach arrived push came to shove, the driver packed out the coach, almost every seat was taken.

The coach heater was turned up full blast whilst the air conditioning was turned off (I presumed these measures were to dry out the air to prevent transmission of COVID-19, but why pack out the coach so much?) I slowly roasted with horrid people, through the early hours of the morning until I arrived at Buchanan bus station, Glasgow.