Days 60 and 61, 4th July and 5th July

Of all the things I've lost it's my mind I miss the most!

Oh dear, so there is me up bright and early to get ready for another nice double day; the boxes are packed, I get out the scale – wow, only 15.5 kg, great! Don't know how I did it, but great! It took some sorting back and forth to have both boxes exactly the same – strange, as they always had the same stuff in each side, so weighing them was only a formality most days – but 15.5kg was still a great thing.

Then I looked around, and what should be next to me? Yes! The tent! Still standing! Grrrrr! So we got back to the usual 17kg after all. Do other people do things like that?

We set off at 9.30 on a beautiful day again, took a short cut up the hill, then spent a while on the official Pennine Bridleway, took another shorter route and avoided going straight past the house we had stayed at last time and finally got onto the High Peak trail, an old railway line that has been converted into a cycle/bridle/walking path. Here the ponies decided to raise the speed and spent the last coule of miles annoyingly trying to go faster than a normal walking speed. What disappointment when I took them past the field they had been on last time to go down and ask whether and where we could stay at the farm.

Several things must have come together – the horses were motivated because it was the way home, I can now deal with most gates quickly and without the need to get off, we knew the way and what to expect... - in any case, everything seemed and actually was quicker this time round.

The field we had been on last time was not usable this time as there were four caravans on it, but the ponies could stay with the sheep right by the farm and I put my tent up on a little bit of beautifully flat lawn where it would have been perfect for cooking without any danger of the stove falling over inside the tent... if I had indeed had to cook.

Christine and Brian were so nice and invited me in to dinner and breakfast and a shower and, when we ended up deciding to stay another day, to all the other meals of the day. It turned out that she was veggie like me, so I got some lovely veggie food as well.

They had made hay that week and the bales were ready to be stacked the day we stayed there, so it was nice to be at least a bit of use – but much less than I would have liked with the bales weighing about 25-30kg each (wow!). Thankfully there were so many able people around that they managed fine with an invalid when it came to the second and third trailers full.

And what did the weather do? Yes, nothing! The rain that was the reason they had got the hay in in a hurry and had been my excuse for taking the day off actually hardly came and then not until quite late in the evening... why anybody ever trusts the weather forecast, I really don't know!