Kinder Scout

Me looking prepared at the start

As well as doing the lovely, relaxed, easy walk of the Great Ridge, we had to do something on Kinder Scout, this is an area that has such history in the UK. It was here that saw the mass trespassing that ensured we still have access to these great wild areas of the country. The UK is really a nation of ramblers and this trespass ensured we still have places to ramble. This walk was held in much more miserable conditions than the one on the great ridge, even taking into account the hail storms. It was meant to be only 14km, but through poor weather, poor paths and a lack of compass it ended up being a bit longer, about 4kms longer.

It was here that I actually got a bit nervous for the first time in the UK. If we were less fit, or less prepared, things could have gone a bit bad. It seems that the Mountain Rescue team do a lot of callouts for lost walkers on the plateau. And having been up there in really bad weather, I can certainly see how easy that would be. If you want tricky navigation, the Kinder Scout plateau is definitely a good challenge. And it's only 630m high or so, goes to show you that it's not necessarily elevation that causes issues. I would definitely go back to this place, but with a compass next time, it was so incredibly wild, and with a tinge of danger, and only 2 hours from London. That's pretty awesome!

The threatening skies - this was when we could still see.

If you like a good bog too, this is the place to go. It was quite incredible, pulling yourself up onto the peat blobs. I don't even know how to describe them, but these tussocks would be almost as high as me, and you would have to pull yourself onto them, there was no way around. And just so much mud. I was kind of expecting a path, across the plateau, but once you leave the edges there really is nothing, no people, no paths, no view. I don't really have many photos from the second part of the walk, since once we left the edge it became a bit more strenuous and I got a bit tired.

The sheep, safe in their fields

Our walk took us up Jacobs Ladder, so you start off wandering through fields with little lambs, and it's all quite pleasant. And then you get to the top and the cloud is super low, there is snow everywhere and the wind is really quite strong. On this first part of the walk there were quite a few people around, I guess because the paths were so good at this point. So we are still feeling pretty comfortable and relaxed. We were thinking we were going to be finished this walk in no time!

There are also all these great rock formations along the edge of the escarpment, they really look kind of mystical, as if giants had something to do with them. All around is just this boggy heather stuff, and then every now and again there are these massive rock piles. The route I had originally planned meant we would avoid most of the big rock piles, but luckily, with our lack of compass we got to do them as well. We carried on around the edge of the plateau until we got to Kinder Downfall, it's a waterfall, the names are really weird in this part. But the wind was so strong a lot of the water was actually blowing upwards. That was pretty cool.

Some of the weird rock formations in the distance

Kinder Downfall, with the water flowing up

This was when it then got a bit dodgy, the map I had suggested there was a path across the plateau to complete the loop where we started. We had also got a bit complacent with the great paths we have seen before in the UK, so hadn't bothered with a compass. Big mistake. The path was almost entirely non-existent, you were just searching for foot prints really. We were following a water course, so perhaps the water was higher than usual and had covered what path there normally is. Or perhaps it's so boggy up there, that paths just don't last. We were always going to be ok though, we had the map and knew so long as we veered more one direction than the other we would eventually hit the escarpment edge again. You didn't want to veer the other way, as you would have ended up parallel to the edge, and that would not have been good. The weather had really deteriorated at this point too, so we could barely see 50m ahead. All rather fun.

We managed to see some of the rocks in the distance eventually, then it was back along the edge on the other side of Edale. I definitely want to get back there, to explore more of this plateau. Hopefully in better weather.

Statue of Liberty

Classic view

 When you are in New York there is one thing you can't miss, and that's the Statue of Liberty (even though I did miss it last time I was there). This was probably the most touristy thing we did, I doubt you can get more touristy than that. If you are organised you could get tickets to visit either the pedestal or the crown, but it seemed like you needed to be 6 months organised to go up the crown. So we did neither of those things, you can still visit the island though and wander around, which is good in it's own right. Definitely go early, you want to be on one of the first boats, it does take a surprisingly long time to see everything.

It's really massive

There is a bit of history on the island, and it's quite large, so it never feels that crowded. At one point it looked likely that it might not even be erected on the island. The US was in charge of financing the pedestal, while the French would pay for the actual statue. The French were going great guns, with the statue being easily paid for, whilst the US was lagging far behind. The government was refusing to pay anything for it, other cities started to offer to pay in return for the statue being moved to their location. It wasn't until Joseph Pulitzer got involved and said he would publish the names of everyone who contributed in his newspaper that the donations started to flow.

The statue is quite interesting in itself. It was designed by a French sculptor, Bartholdi, but he didn't really know how to erect it. Gustave Eiffel got involved, so the statue is actually a massive tower, with the copper skin just wrapped around it. It was one of the first instances of a structure where the outer walls are not load bearing, which is how a lot of skyscrapers are built nowadays. He actually built the statue before he did the Eiffel Tower. He really got into the tower building.

Getting to and from the island is a real experience in tourist herding, and since everyone has such practise in it, it's pretty smooth. There is a bit of waiting around, and you may think, as you are standing in this massive crush of people, that there is no way you are all going to fit on the boat. But then you all fit, there are never people left behind waiting for the next boat. It's this massive empty shell of a boat, designed for maximum people carrying.

When you buy a ticket to the statue, you get a ticket to the Ellis Island Immigration museum at the same time. This was kind of interesting, I wouldn't spend too long here, but it did have some interesting stuff. It kind of got smashed in hurricane Sandy, and is still recovering, apparently the whole island was submerged. You could tell that a bit from the exhibits, there were a few that were closed and some of it still seemed a bit half-done.

It was here though that I learned that the US was getting on average 1 million immigrants between 1905 and 1914, which is a crazy amount of people arriving. I get why the statue is such a symbol now, there must have been so many people coming past it hoping for a better life. The immigrants arriving in New York would have to first be inspected on Ellis Island, the government wanted to make sure they could support themselves, though only 2% of people arriving were refused entry. Which sounds pretty low, it feels like we allow in many fewer than 98% of people who apply for visas to immigrate nowadays.

As well as the immigration stuff, which was pretty interesting, there was also a bit on the history of the US as a whole. This was about the only museum we found in the whole time we were in New York which actually dealt with the history of the country. There is one thing I remember about this part of the museum, perhaps because it was so harrowing. I had never heard about the Trail of Tears before visiting this place. There was a bit of hoopla in the US lately because they wanted to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 note, replacing Andrew Jackson, and there seemed to be some opposition to this.

Which is incredible when you learn about this Andrew Jackson guy. Apparently he owned 100s of slaves and was the main advocate of the forced relocation policy for the American Indians. It was this policy which led to the Trail of Tears, and we learned about the Cherokee removal in particular. This seemed especially sad, as they were actually using the institutions of the US to protect their land and rights. The supreme court had even agreed with them, saying the individual states couldn't infringe on their rights, but this Andrew Jackson refused to uphold the Supreme Court's ruling and allowed the Cherokee to be forcibly removed. This ended up being something of a death march, with thousands of people dying.

Once I learned this it was very weird to hear so many people defending his position on the note, especially since Harriet Tubman seemed such a hero in comparison.