Everyday Adventures #30

Celebrating the summer solstice with folklore & feasts, and finding everyday adventures in a frantic month.

This month has been spent frantically trying to get ready for our upcoming trip to the Lake District. Plans for adventure annoyingly held up with what is the busiest time of year at work. The warm weather that has blighted England over the past month has left a longing to spend time on the water and the Lakes is the perfect place to do so.

Here’s a round up of some adventures over the past month:

Garden Fruits

With the first couple of months of the year spent working out whether we were actually buying the house we rented, or if we would have to move out, I never really committed to growing much food in the garden this year. Fear of not being here to bare the fruits of my labour.

Now the purchase has all gone through however, I was treated to the best outlay of raspberries and gooseberries we’ve had since I planted them 4 years ago. Nothing has beaten spending a summer evening in the garden munching away on fruit grown within arms reach.

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Getting back into Cycling

I dusted my bike of this month for a ride one evening down to the river. No plans other than to sit on the embankment and relax for an hour after work.

I’ve found cycling to be somewhat of a achilles heal in my adventuring ever since I had a nightmare bikepacking in Scotland and had to be rescued by the Coast Guard. I do want to get back into it, and eventually get back out bikepacking, so a little gravel ride was perfect for stretching the old cycling legs out.

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A Picnic at the Park

My partner and I had both been out for a long day at work, and with little energy to go home and cook dinner, decided instead to raid M&S reduced section and head to the local park for a picnic to watch the sunset.

There’s something about eating cold pesto pasta with plastic cutlery that just feels adventurous and outdoorsy. It would have been easy to order a takeaway, retire to the sofa and hope that the next day provided more opportunities. But we didn’t let the busyness of the day beat us, and it was a great way to spend an evening together without digital distractions at home.

Mapping Future Plans

I realised (albeit a couple of months late) that I’ve been writing this blog for 5 years now. Initially on my website, before moving to Everyday Adventures on Substack.

I looked back at some old blog posts and it’s inspire an idea for an adventure that I’m now cracking on with planning. I’ll be sharing some more details and an Adventure Unpacked about it in the coming months, so why not subscribe so you can receive it straight to your inbox!

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When I find myself with free time that isn’t spent outdoors, I usually end up reading or watching other people spend their time outside.

• I really enjoyed reading Charlotte’s recent post about finding rare forest flowers in Scotland and the work being done to conserve and restore them. Check it out here:

  Wonders of the Woods: Saving Scotland's Rarest Forest Flowers

• Ash Routen has recently joined Substack. Why not check out his newsletter At the Edge of the Map for posts about polar expeditions, mountaineering and other grand adventures.

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I managed to finally kickstart this segment of my newsletter a couple of months back and stayed on track to follow up this month with a visit to the Peak District to celebrate the Summer Solstice in Style!

Folklore and Feast

On the afternoon of Summer Solstice I pulled down a dusty track in what felt like the middle of nowhere (It wasn’t really, I’d just got lost and took the narrowest single track lane ever) and parked up at a farm near Belper.

Luke @ Peakrill Walks had recommended a guided walk he was doing as part of an event on the solstice, exploring the local landscape and talking all tings folklore. IT sounded like a perfect way to spend the solstice.

The afternoon was spent walking through the woodlands and rolling hills of Hadley, as Luke shared stories of how the land here was farmed and shaped by locals over the centuries. He entertained us with tales of runaway lovers and lawless highwaymen who had shared the same paths we now walked all those years before. These stories became folklore, passed down generation by generation by the locals as a way to pass along lessons on life in the Peaks.

The walk was followed up by a wonderful fire cooked meal of local delicacies as Luke’s stories embraced more of the mystic of the land, with tales of mermaids, goblins and hounds as the sunset on the solstice.

I would 100% recommend checking out Luke’s guided walks if your ever around in the Peaks!

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