We got up - had breakfast and checked the updated weather reports. It now appeared that the storm coming in from the west wouldn't hit either the Lake or Peak Districts until afternoon. We decided to stick to Plan A and hotfoot it down to Castleton and start our walk there as soon as we all arrived - we were meeting Gordon and Jeb there. With the benefit of hindsight, that was a tactical error - we should have used the dry weather in the morning and had another walk locally in the Lake District then driven down (in the rain, probably) to Derbyshire.
It was still dry when we got to our hotel in Castleton and it stayed that way for the first 40 minutes or so of our walk towards the caves:
We didn't quite make it to the cave complex before the rain - by the time we got there we were pretty soaked, but we welcomed the opportunity of going underground for a while and staying dry:
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This is the cavern we were in:
Here's our shortened route:
The walk back to our accommodation was pretty dreich as well. Dave hadn't joined us in the caves as he'd been there recently anyway, so he was already back at the Air B&B they'd rented for him, Jeb and Gordon (our hotel didn't take dogs). He'd been good enough to organise some beer and nibbles for us at their house but it was still chucking it down and all most of us wanted to do was get in to dry clothes again.
Most of us would have killed for a hot bath at that time, but Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese only had showers. Over at the B&B Jeb rejoiced in sharing with our WhatsApp group this photo from his room:
We knew by now that Castleton (population 642) was something like beer heaven. Amazingly it has as many as 7 pubs and all of them had real ale with anywhere between 5 and 8 handpumps each. We certainly enjoyed the beer in our hotel that night before, during and after dinner. The forecast was looking good for the next couple of days so we were all happy campers again.
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