Dark Peak Walks. Paul Besley

Walk 1 Chatsworth to Birchen Edge

       Walk 2 Longshaw Estate and the gritstone edges

       Walk 3 Fox House to Big Moor

       Walk 4 Fox House to Stanedge Pole

       Walk 5 Grindleford to Higger Tor

       Central Dark Peak

       Walk 6 Hathersage to Stanage Edge

       Walk 7 Wyming Brook to Stanage Edge

       Walk 8 Bamford Moor

       Walk 9 Win Hill to Hope Cross

       Walk 10 Kings Tree to Shepherds Meeting Stones

       Walk 11 Westend and Bleaklow Stones

       Walk 12 Derwent Edge

       Walk 13 Alport Castles and the Woodlands Valley

       Walk 14 Margery Hill to Back Tor

       Walk 15 Low Bradfield and Dale Dyke

       Walk 16 Langsett to Howden Edge

       Walk 17 Langsett to Pike Lowe

       Walk 18 Torside to Bleaklow Head

       Walk 19 Wildboar Clough to Lawrence Edge

       Walk 20 Old Glossop to Bleaklow Head

       Walk 21 Kinder Scout Northern Edge

       Walk 22 Kinder Scout Western Edge

       Walk 23 Kinder Scout

       Walk 24 Kinder Scout Southern Edge

       Walk 25 The Great Ridge

       Northern Dark Peak

       Walk 26 Dunford Bridge to Ramsden Clough

       Walk 27 Crowden Horseshoe

       Walk 28 Crowden to Chew Valley

       Walk 29 Marsden to Black Hill

       Walk 30 Alphin Pike to Birchen Clough

       Walk 31 Binn Green to Great Dove Stone Rock

       Walk 32 Cotton Famine Road

       Western Dark Peak

       Walk 33 Goyt Valley to Shining Tor

       Walk 34 Derbyshire Bridge to Shutlingsloe

       Walk 35 The Roaches

       Long day walks

       Walk 36 Marsden to Edale

       Walk 37 Langsett to Edale

       Walk 38 Gritstone edges

       Walk 39 Edale Horseshoe

       Walk 40 Kinder Scout skyline

       Appendix A Route summary table

       Appendix B Useful information

       Appendix C Aircraft crash site locations

      Long Causeway and Stanage Edge

      Walking along the Great Ridge (Walk 25)

      INTRODUCTION

      On a beautiful winter’s day with a sky that was powder blue and dotted with brilliant white clouds, I dropped down from Barrow Stones to Ridgewalk Moor. As the path levelled out the wind suddenly became stronger, not enough to blow me over, but enough for me to think it was time to be getting off the high moor and down into the valley. The afternoon was drawing to a close and my walk that day had been one of the most enjoyable that winter. I hadn’t seen a soul, it being a weekday, and my walk had taken me off the footpath and across a succession of moors, rising up to Bleaklow Stones via a series of spot heights that formed a natural ascent. As I turned to head towards Round Hill I had the most amazing sense of the ocean. I stopped and breathed in the air, taking huge draughts into my lungs. I could smell and taste sea salt on the wind, fresh, tangy and exhilarating. It is a moment I relive, and it is just one of many memories that I have of the Dark Peak.

      Full winter kit on Kinder Scout (Walk 24)

      The area has a habit of producing days that are to be remembered; it is one of the reasons it is loved by so many people. It is a place of great beauty and variety, with a landscape that changes with the seasons. Its primary trait is one of restrained menace. The land broods, waiting for an excuse to show its dark side, often suddenly from nowhere and in a most brutal way. There is a reason why seven Mountain Rescue teams surround the Dark Peak, which alone is enough of a warning to any walker to treat the area with respect.

      The Dark Peak is fringed with gritstone edges that look out across wide valleys to high peat moorland. It is famous for two things. The first is gritstone, coarse sandstone laid down between 360 million and 300 million years ago when the area was a vast river delta. The gritstone forms long high edges, a Mecca for climbers, and outcrops that give walkers superb viewpoints across wide valleys to the high moors beyond. The second feature the Dark Peak is famous for is encountered by all who venture onto the high moors: peat. In summer, it takes the form of a dark chocolate brownie that has a gentle bounce which makes a gait slightly comical. In wet weather it is an entirely different matter. Chocolate fondant is perhaps an appropriate description. Peat, when saturated, still maintains its solid appearance, which makes crossing the moors a challenge, especially if you enter a grough, a steep-sided incision from which egress is less than noble. At best you can end up covered in the black ooze up to your knees; at worst it can be up to your thighs.

      Peat is one of the Dark Peak’s characteristics

      The walks are not just about this incredible landscape. They are also about the human element that lies deep within the Dark Peak. From the Neolithic remains of fire platforms to Bronze Age cairns and burial mounds, we walk in footsteps long ago imprinted into the soft peat. It is an area that has witnessed murder, with the martyrs at Padley Chapel (Walk 5), mystery at Cutthroat Bridge (Walk 8), and human despair in Hannah Mitchell, who lived a life under such cruelty at Alport Hamlet, yet went on to become a Manchester magistrate and writer (Walk 13). The first national park to be granted this status was the Peak National Park, in April 1951, with those who fought for the