Welcome back E'man,
I had to chuckle at your comments regarding 'Mam Tor' as I was stupid enough as a teenager to climb it during a bitterly cold November. It was after all, not a hard climb! My thinking, if you could call it such, was that it would be good seasoning for my summer Alpine climbing which was always performed under the protection of my experienced and much wiser uncle. Truth being known, he would haul the both of us up the Alpine slopes and then haul the both of us down again and I would just quietly shrug my shoulders and show off.
Anyway, I got about third of the way up the Tor when the weather closed and a crisp sunny day turned into Dante’s Icy Inferno. I was dressed only in hiking clothes and boots and the fear of God suddenly struck me as I knew I was close to death. I was on my own and on the verge of frostbite and weeping like a hairdresser struck dumb. In fact I did get the first stages of frostbite in my fingers. Fortunately as I staggered back down the slope with admirable speed and much sliding, I was able to flag a motorist down who seemed mesmerized for quite some while at the appearance of a seventeen year old appearing out of the driven snow like Captain Oates. All he could do as he drove me to safety was to look at me every so often, shake his head and mutter 'Bloody Hell!'....Bloody Hell! He kindly took me out of the to where my friends were enjoying a pint or two around a blazing fire. After a few minutes bravado took up residence in my ego again and my fingers, to my astonishment, proceeded to swell until they resembled huge half-cooked sausages on the verge of detonation.
My God, how did we survive our youth!
HS
PS. Ozzie, yes you are right, I think Chatsworth was where ‘Waugh’s Brideshead’ Revisited was filmed