January 2025. Edale.
Everyone told me that death (don’t panic, not my own) would be time-consuming, but it also casts an invisible barrier over your travel, daring you to travel too far from home (whatever that is) lest something unexpectedly requiring your presence to find a green slip for no obvious purpose crops up.
So while Mrs RM and I desperately needed fresh air and fresh sights, we won’t be travelling too far until the burial, and after that it’s key codes for LPAs and probate. Whatever probate is.
Once again, we arrived at Sheffield Station and simply took the first train out to a place we hadn’t been to before.
Which doesn’t give a great choice, but oddly Edale has escaped GBG attention, and therefore ours.
Yes, the place the Japanese tourists gawp out of dirty windows at on the slow train from Sheff to Stockport.
Barely a village, Edale’s platform is a starting point for Kinder Scout and the Tors, who were short-lived skiffle group from Portsmouth c. 1961.
In truth, despite the tourist trade the rugged High Peak hasn’t had much to grace the Beer Guide over the years, just a rotating entry in Castleton and Hope.
And the two pubs for Edale’s 353 residents and rather more walkers/tea shop tickers probably won’t get in. But should they, huh ?
Let’s start about 300 steps (0.8 calories) from the train at The Rambler, where in sub-Arctic weather blokes in bobble hats are demonstrating their “hard walking man” credentials.
Mrs RM is already inside, searching for the seat by the fire.
There’s always one pic that sums up a pub, and this is it;
What you can’t hear in that photo is “You’re Beautiful” by James Blunt,
and you can’t taste a flabby Doom Bar (NBSS 2) nor a cool, thin Theakston house beer (2.5), beer that matches the average scores on the excellent new What Pub site. Cruzcampo battled it out with Fosters for the Gen Z hiker’s pound.
It’s a pleasant dining pub akin to the Vintage chain (if they still exist),
with ambitious pricing for its pub classics.
Oddly, the beer was “only” a fiver (a pint), and a fiver is a small price for entry to the world of “tourist pub with ’80s soundtrack“, a classic of the genre.
OK, Mrs RM, enough of pubs, lets walk that hill.
Only joking.
retiredmartin 
When your parents die you are often unprepared for the details follow. Quite a few surprises in how estates wrap up. I keep saying we’ll leave things in better shape, but I never really take action.
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Probate’s not too bad. You may need to do an Inheritance Tax form but most of it probably won’t apply. Then you just take it to the Probate Registry with the death certificate. You may have to swear an oath, can’t remember.
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When my father died, I handed the probate application over to our solicitor. I could have done it myself, but my elder sister, who was joint executor, lives in the United States, and there had been a falling out between her and our younger sister – over mum’s jewelry, of all things.
As I got dragged into the argument, it made perfect sense to allow a legal expert to sort things out, especially as transferring money to the US wasn’t as straight forward as one might think. I’d already done most of the groundwork, such as closing bank accounts, checking through old insurance policies, whilst my UK based sister handled the sale of the former family home.
Allowing our solicitor to handle the probate application and, more importantly the disbursement of the estate, was money well spent, as far as I was concerned.
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Martin, I spent a week in Edale, with a youth group, on a hiking holiday. I must have been 15-16 at the time, so pubs weren’t really of any interest.
I hiked up that hill though – Kinder Scout, from memory, and then back down the other side, via a route known as Jacob’s Ladder, so will be interested to read how you and Mrs RM got on.
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