Our guide was very good and helped us envision the landscape as it would have been when the glaciers were nearby and mammoth, reindeer, hyenas, and bears roamed the landscape.  There would not have been large trees since the few that could survive the cold would have been growing close to the ground.  We saw some of the flint and bone tools the people would have used as axes, knives, spears, and sewing needles while they followed the seasonal migrations of the reindeer from southern France.

Apparently, when people arrived at the caves after during their long journey, they would send in the kids to make sure that there weren’t any dangerous animals already sheltering in the caves.  People generally lived in the entrances of the caves and stretched animals skins across the openings to provide additional shelter.

We were hoping to be able to see the recently discovered artwork in Church Cave, but it was closed for the winter due to hibernating bats.  We had listened to a program on the BBC about the first discovery of cave art in Britain here and everyone was interested to see how it compared to the art we saw in Rouffignac Cave in France.  We’ll have to return in the spring after the bats have emerged and the new visitor centre is completed.  In the meantime, we might spend some time exploring the virtual ice age.

The kids were ready to go before we finished packing and spent some time on the swings waiting for us.

It isn’t particularly far to Hartington from Derby, but the kids made themselves comfortable and passed the time singing along to music.

The campground is in a field on a farm, apparently typical for camping in England. Molly brought her hammock, but was unable to find any suitable sturdy trees. The grass does provide a nice, soft surface for sleeping, though.

There were a number of our home educating friends who were there as well and the kids had a wonderful time romping through the meadow.

It threatened to rain just before dinner, so the kids got out the umbrellas. The clouds passed without any precipitation and the umbrellas became dens for some sort of game.

Not surprisingly, there were plenty of ungulates in the vicinity. I estimate that there are about 45 million ruminates (sheep and cattle). While this doesn’t approach the shear volume of countries like China and Australia or the ruminate/person ratios of New Zealand and the Falkland Islands (only 0.7 per person compared to 15 per person), it is a remarkable number of grazers in a relatively small area and they have a huge impact on the ecology and the landscape.

Here we are walking through one such landscape. The remarkable thing about this photo, besides the number of buttercups (apparently they aren’t tasty) is how tall River is compared to Molly. I think she must be having another growth spurt.

This is actually the same River Dove that we explored previously, only further upstream. An idyllic spot for a picnic and a swim.

The water was actually very, very, cold. The kids didn’t seem too bothered by it, though. I managed to get in for a few seconds, but it was too shallow to swim any distance and it was too cold to just lie there, so I gave up fairly quickly.

This patch of mud was nice and squishy!

River walked across the stepping stones to get across.

It is a beautiful time of year in England right now. Everything has been very green recently. Flowers are blooming everywhere.

I can’t resist taking wildflower pictures. This thistle was an amazing color!

Mayflies were abundant as well.

The kids spent a lot of time exploring a tunnel through the limestone cliff that connected the large cave opening with a smaller opening off to the side. Molly sent Sage through with the video camera. Needless to say, a video of a dark cave is not visually stimulating, but I found it fascinating nonetheless. You can hear the camera banging into the rock walls. Conversing while traversing this dark world apparently helped distract them from what might otherwise have been frightening.

One of the kids had a bat detector and we listened to some Chiropteran conversations as well. I think the bat detector works by frequency shifting the short wavelengths used by bats to communicate into pitches that our ears are capable of discerning.

Some of the folk we went with are planning to stay for the week. If the weather cooperates, we’re thinking of going back next weekend for another go.

After the knitting group, we set off for a music festival in the Peak District. As part of the celebration, there was a green parade. The kids enjoyed the festive atmosphere, marching all around the stage and through the camping area.

I was a bit disappointed with the music at the festival. England seems to be enjoying a renaissance of 80’s / punk culture. Overall, though, the festival was very nice. There was a friendly atmosphere, loads of kids, and the weather was beautiful. We enjoyed the storytelling by our friend Rachel who we’ve seen perform several times before.

Sage found a comfortable spot to listen:

You might think that three people wouldn’t be able to fit in one sleeping bag, but I hope you didn’t bet too much on it.

On Sunday, we packed up and went for a walk at Dovedale.

The kids were fascinated with these logs studded with coins. Perhaps they were left as offerings for the wood folk?

We climbed up through the archway to Reynard’s Cave.

This time I remembered to bring the headlamps and we explored the dark tunnel which was very exciting.

The trail is very popular, especially on a bank holiday weekend, and there was a queue at the stepping stones.

Despite the steady drizzle, it was an enjoyable walk and a nice way to end the weekend.

The average age of a lead miner when this mine was active was fourteen. Kids started working when they were around 4 years old and were considered old-timers if they lived to be twenty-eight. Apparently lung cancer was the leading cause of death. Kids would work fourteen hours a day, earning less than two pounds a week ($4), about the cost of a loaf of bread. There was one tunnel where an eight year old boy worked for 14 months. Another kid’s job was to work the bellows that helped circulate the air and kept people from getting radon poisoning. It seems, from my perspective, that folk would have been better off having a garden, or something, almost anything else, than mining.

The tunnel ended at a natural cavern where two underground rivers met. The cave system was originally discovered by explorers who followed the river underground from the surface. The network of riverways through the porous limestone connects to several other caves in the area. They never did find much lead here, despite the efforts of generations of miners.

Outside the cave, we followed a footpath through Winnats Pass. This is the Peak District of England, and reportedly some of the finest walking around.

The landscape is pretty amazing. The bits of limestone jutting up in Winnats Pass are much more dramatic than the rolling hills around Derby.

It is very beautiful, but also, to my mind, very cultivated. There is very little that interupts the flow of grass besides the wonderful stone walls and the occasional patch of nettles. Amidst the sheep and their ubiquitous debris, we discovered fossils. Actually, Molly had a serendipitous slide down a steep hillside and while we waited for her to catch her breath we started looking at the rocks. We found large numbers scallops, a mussel, and something snail-like that must have crawled around here during the Carboniferous.

While I do appreciate the beauty of the countryside here, I have to say that I miss the forest and the sense of wildness that comes with a forest. Even a relatively urban forest has that bit of chaos that is somehow lacking here. We did discover a few spots in the steep gullies were wildflowers and ferns grew in the seeps at the base of the limestone cliffs.