The day started well as the gas held out long enough for bacon butties for breakfast, I decided that although I might get away with it for the rest of the trip there was a good chance it would fail in the middle of cooking, and with no spare that would be a minor disaster, so the first stop of the day was at Peak Leisure on the edge of Buxton, as suggested by the site wardens. A very nice lady duly relieved me of nearly £50 in return for their last refill bottle while we had a chat about the whole bottled gas situation (the withdrawal of the smallest Calor, and similar, bottles is causing a lot of problems for both campervans and boats).
I’d made no other plans for the day so just headed roughly northwards with the idea of playing a bit of Brown Sign Bingo (see a brown tourist sign, follow it and see what happens). On this occasion I spotted signs for Blue John Caverns and thought, hmmm! Over 40 years ago I did some volunteering with the National Trust on Mam Tor, helping repair paths and put up fencing to keep people on said paths. I thought at the time a visit to the caverns would be good but of course we didn’t have the time or opportunity.
Mam Tor from the cavern entrance
There is one downside to the caverns though, there are 245 steps down and, inevitably, the same back up again! The lady selling tickets did point this out and made sure I’d be OK, which I was. Blue John (derived from the French Bleu Jaune, Blue Yellow) is a unique form of Calcium Fluorite with banded colours, possibly due to the shale oil present in the area although there’s some doubt about this.
Great Britain in Blue John?
The guide we had was very good and as it was a smallish group (12 of us, they can take up to 45 at once) he had a bit more time to show some of the sights. Something he pointed out, and it’s true, is that sizes and distances are distorted down caves, like they are in thick mist or fog, because you have no reference points. The climb back up was taken at a very steady pace so in truth was no real problem at all but I was glad of an ice cream and sit down for a few minutes at the top.
I returned to the site via Bakewell, for the sake of it, where I did a bit of food shopping (although not for puddings or, God forbid, the impostor tarts) and had lunch. The route back took me through the village of Youlgreave (or Youlgrave, both appear on signs), the location of one of our early camping holidays (1972 at a guess) before the final stop of the day to fill up with petrol ready for the journey home - again I might have been ok but might not.
Sights you very rarely see…
I passed the Long Rake Spar Company, a 150 year old aggregate supplier, one of the buildings still has a pithead winding gear sticking out of the roof.
A rat-rod VW Caddy camper complete with ribbons and tin cans on the back, driven by a lady in full wedding dress! I heard the rattling coming from the road, and thought someone had a problem, then a few minutes later they arrived on a nearby pitch, presumably having come straight away on their honeymoon.
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