My encounter on the Pennine Way - still can't explain it

Right, I've been a lurker here for about three years and never thought I'd actually post one of these, but I need to get this off my chest because my mates think I'm barking mad.

Summer of 2019, me and my girlfriend were hiking near Bleaklow in the Peak District. Late afternoon, maybe around 4 PM, proper overcast day. We heard this sound first - not quite a growl, more like something large moving through the heather at pace. My girlfriend grabbed my arm and we both froze. Then I saw it: a dark shape, roughly seven feet tall, bipedal, moving through the valley about 200 metres away. Could've been a bloke in fancy dress, but the way it moved was wrong. The gait was all wrong.

We bolted back to the car and didn't say much for hours. She's never wanted to go back, and honestly I don't blame her. I've been reading about North American Bigfoot reports ever since, and some of the descriptions match what I saw. Has anyone else spotted something similar in the British countryside? I'm not claiming it was definitely a cryptid - but I can't explain what we saw as misidentification.

Cheers for sharing mate. Bleaklow's got form for this sort of thing - there's been a few reports around there over the years. The movement description is interesting. Could it have been a bear? There's been escapees from zoos/private collections before, though bears typically move differently.

Did you take any photos? That's the first thing everyone asks, I know. No offense meant, just... we need evidence. Your account is detailed but anecdotal. What was the weather like? Wind direction? Visibility? These details matter for ruling out misidentification.

This is exactly the sort of report we need more of. The UK has a long history of large bipedal creatures - Spring-heeled Jack, the Shug Monkey, various moorland entities. People assume Bigfoot is only a North American thing, but our countryside is vast and underpopulated in many areas. Cheers for the detailed account.

Seven feet tall? Mate, that's basically an unusually tall man. How did you rule out human? The Peak District gets loads of hikers and outdoor enthusiasts. Some bloke having a laugh or testing his gear could easily look strange from 200 metres away at dusk.

I'm not saying you're lying, but confirmation bias is real. You'd already been reading Bigfoot reports, your brain was primed to interpret ambiguous stimuli as cryptid activity. Classic pattern-recognition overshoot. Still a fascinating story though!