Today started cloudy with quite a strong wind, but was good walking weather. We set off over fields, soon joining green lanes and bridle paths, which were less interesting. But our route took us through the lovely Middleton Dale, again popular with tourists on a Bank Holiday Monday. Our hotel had provided a complimentary picnic, which we enjoyed by the river. We finally rejoined the Limestone Way, which took us almost as far as our destination for the night in Bakewell. We stayed at the Rutland Arms and were booked in for dinner. After a decent meal, we were looking forward to sampling the famous Bakewell Pudding, but service was so slow that we gave up and enjoyed coffee and biscuits in our room instead!

Everyone came out to join us on our walk today. They were not disappointed as after a short steep climb out of Bakewell, there were acres of open fields, wide earth paths through woodland, gravel lanes, river walks and plenty of picnic areas. There were even some muddy spots making a last ditch effort to test our skills at long jump before drying up completely. Fields of buttercups again, but this time with some cows grazing amongst them. Now, buttercups are poisonous to animals so I wondered if the cows chomping away in the field of them knew. They did. Each beast carefully ate the grass between them, avoiding severe tummy ache. When I was about nine living in one of a line of prefabs, the girl next door, Pat Smith, held a buttercup under my chin and said the yellow reflected off me showing that I liked butter – and I did! It was much later that I realised the yellow ‘glow’ of the buttercup is unique in the plant world and is the result of an air gap between the flowers very flat coloured dermis cells. There’s lots of other remarkable qualities to the humble buttercup, but of course the most important thing to know is that they’re poisonous, so I decided to eat one to test if this was really true. I also ate some grass and dandelion leaf for comparison. Well, I’m still here I think, so they’re not as deadly as some plants (Brussel sprouts for instance), but they do taste awful. The flower is bitter and unpleasant, but the stalk really stung my tongue and I was not at all inclined to swallow it. The dandelion leaf was a bit old looking very dark green and tasted like stale cabbage and may have been more palatable dipped in a generous vinegar dressing. Grass was the most pleasant and quite sweet tasting. I picked a few tall stems, pealed away the blade to the bottom of the stalks and chewed on the succulent cores – it was nice. Since coming second in a raw cabbage eating competition for a small bag of sweets with my friend Ophelia (aged four at the time), my taste buds are ready for just about anything. Today’s walk was the kind that would appeal to a couple of confused elderly folk wanting a stroll before dinner (without the much anticipated and longed for pudding, alas).