Just wanted to share a particular walk that I did the other day…. Set off with my wife’s cousin Lee on a spectacular 11 km hike up  in the Peak District of Staffordshire. We knew that some rain was forecast, but what eventually happened was totally awesome. Our hike started in the beech forest along the banks of the Dane River and we slowly climbed up through the forest canopy through to the amazing Lud’s church. This is actually a canyon, totally natural, where Christian secret meetings were held in the 16th century when the “new” faiths were spreading….legend has it King Charles the 1st hid here at one point too…. dark and foreboding, it started to rain!! Up we climbed to the to the top of the hills… to an area that is known as Roaches Ridge, a magnificent part of the Peak district with Tors jutting out into the void, with the greenest valley’s and farmland below. What made this walk so good, was the weather! We experienced 3 thunderstorm cells in the space of 40 minutes… unbelievable, with Thunder and lightning as we sheltered under a Tor and then continued on watching the next front whirl its way towards us.

England is just so amazing in the late spring… I posted a photo I took a few weeks back on facebook, taken near Piddletrenthide, and have now posted it here…. lovely afternoon light in Dorset….it doesn’t get much better than this… I could spend a year here in this country and only scratch the surface!!