There are various Everests a British walker can scale.
I mean not actual high summits, but peak experiences. What can beat an English bluebell wood at April’s end? A dawn chorus expedition in May? Or a golden-leaved fungi foray in October?
For rarity, in the southern half of 21st-century Britain at least, there is a walking experience that surpasses them all: a snowy stroll in brilliant sunshine when our ordinary world stands transformed.
I’ve just returned from a snowbound Peak District where I reached that pinnacle. What an outing! There were inches of snow – frosted hard and then touched up with fresh powder – when we set out from the village of Litton. Like the best of walks, this offered a fine old pub, the Red Lion, for the start-and-finish line.
The world was white and dazzling, and we could hear nothing – all human sound was muffled by the great acoustic blanket of the snow. In the silent stillness, the conversation of two jackdaws on a distant stone wall carried far and wide.
I was walking with a big gang of friends and children. My own had never experienced snow like this before, such is its paucity in our climatically changed Norfolk homeland. So the excitement was far in excess of a standard walk.
We left the slippery, snow-packed lane for a footpath across this high land of small pastures, each enclosed by old stone walls. Every field offered a fresh canvas of pristine snow for the creation of snow angels, for snow-rolling and even a tentative dabble in snow-munching. (It was as light as candyfloss and as cool as ice, and tasted of absolutely nothing.)
Fortunately for the grown-ups, the only thing the snow wasn’t suitable for was snowball fights, being so cold and powdery it couldn’t be compressed into handheld grenades.
Betty the miniature dachshund was snow-drifted with every step, and it looked like an enormous effort to leap up and out of the snow. For her, however, it was more than worthwhile because the snow kept a ledger of every animal that had crossed our path in the last 24 hours. So there was a bounty of rabbit prints, hare marks and delicate crow tracery to sniff and follow.
The path took us to a wooded gulley, and we gingerly picked our way along the steep edge of Cressbrook Dale. Every branch of every tree still cradled snow.
Deceptively soft shards of snow, like white moss, adorned every other surface, turning unremarkable or even ugly objects – the dead heads of last summer’s hogweed; barbed wire – into extravagant and beautiful Christmas decorations.
The path wiggled between the stone cottages and gardens of Cressbrook, where walls were adorned with ‘Save Cressbrook Dale’ signs. One of the country’s most protected valleys has been subject to a long-running battle over attempts to establish an eco-community in it.
I hoped to enlarge our walk by ducking down to the River Wye and joining the Monsal Trail, an old railway line of awesome viaducts and tunnels.
There, incredible icicles as tall as I am hung down from the ceiling – spectacular stalactites that looked viciously strong and would barely outlive a mayfly.
But the midwinter sun was already low in the sky and the walking party were dreaming of hot drinks in the Red Lion. So we took a lane, happily devoid of cars, back to Litton, past the cemetery pines whose needles bore the most delicate frosting from the grand cake-maker in the sky.
There was just enough light left for some hillside sledging. Then it was dripping socks on radiators, feet by the fireside and golden ales to toast the most magnificent walking experience of all.
Start at the Red Lion, Litton, Derbyshire SK17 8QU. Take the first right past the post office and the field path south where the lane bends west. Follow the path south to Cressbrook, where the River Wye can be crossed to join the Monsal Trail, or take the lane via Littonslack for a shorter circuit back to the pub
