"You went WHERE?"

Last month, Tom and I spent a week in Sheffield with our friends Jen and Ray. For an interesting day activity, they took us here.

Um, yeah.

The little dude in the picture is Theo, their son, who understood perfectly the name of our destination!

It must be great living in the peaceful village of Castleton, home of the Devil's Arse. You get the lovely quiet country setting ...

with such subtle and attractive signage everywhere ...

So this ... place is actually a really amazing cavern, that used to house a village of ropemakers -- as in, people actually lived inside the cave! We took a tour of the cave -- really interesting. And dark. So like, no pictures of the inside.

But the area right near the entrance is beautiful.

Some cheery decorations at the exit of the cave.

Hi Tom! I'm coming, just looking around ...

It was a damp, foggy day, and it got dark really early. Made for a really beautiful twilight.


The alternate name of the cavern is "Peak Cavern", which seems to go with the surroundings a bit better somehow. However, the signage was quite uniform.

It was a really great cave tour, anyway!

That's one colorful weather map ...

Probably doesn't bode well for the evening commute, huh.

Yep, that's a snowstorm all right ...

This is the view out the front window:


There was no snow on the ground when we went to bed last night. Now, um, there is.

I had a walk around.

Cold seat there dude!

Lots of workplaces are closed today, but you know, the buses were running no problem.

It's still snowing out there, so we haven't seen the back of this storm yet. It's not super-cold, but the snowflakes are small and kind of sting when they hit you in the face.

Something hot to drink, I think ...

A snowy afternoon in Sheffield

After a walk in the snowy countryside ...

(the first time we've been in England when they've had snow!)

we stopped in a pub ...

(I think it was the Strines Inn)

to have a drink and a traditional English pub snack.

(who hasn't had ox-flavored potato chips before?)

In all fairness, this wasn't the only food we had. But when we're in England, we do go out of our way to try the outrageous flavored crisps they have: ham and mustard, mint chicken, roast beef and pickled onion, etc. But this "roast ox" one, now, that was a new one on us. While I don't know what ox tastes like, the crisps did taste eerily meat-like.

I had a nice mug of hot chocolate to go with it. Mmm ...

And a Happy %$$# Christmas to you too!

Seen on a front window in our friends' neighborhood over the holidays:


It was even better at night when there were cheery lights in the window right next to it.