Every year my cycling club (Derby Mercury) take a winter break at a youth hostel. As per usual, this did not disappoint. We took over Hawarth Youth Hostel in the moors for the weekend at the beginning of December.
There was the usual crowd there with some new faces and lots of excited children. I took my dog Luna with me, she loved it. There was a lot of excitement for her though. One of the highlights for me was the keg of Real Ale from Jim which was simply lovely.
On the Saturday I woke about 6am and sat in the kitchen with Luna relaxing for 45 minutes with a couple of cups of tea. About 7am the rest of the team rose and me, Ian and Sean set about the mammoth task of cooking Breakfast Cobs and Porridge for 47 people. I can tell you it was hot in the kitchen!
Once that was done we all got our kit together to prepare for the walk. Mother Nature had kindly dumped a load of snow on the moors. While beautiful, it wasn’t half slippy! Not the one when you have a replacement hip. As we approached the moors the black dog of doom descended on me, but I didn’t tell anyone. Truth be told I was really anxious. I had an irrational fear that something bad would happen. I popped one of my emergency meds and by the time we actually hit the snowy stuff I was well again.
We left the steep sided route through the beautiful town and across the cemetery path. Soon we were in the moors and I can only describe it as beautiful. The route we took was the Bronte path up to the famous falls. When we got there it was very very cold. I put the coat on Luna.
We then carried on higher upto Top Withens, then from here we made for the highest point on the moor. We followed the Ridgeline back down to Leeshaw Reservoir. When we got to Haworth we had a well deserved beer.
Bipolar Ironman 