Category: Dark Peak
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The Snake Path
What a change from yesterday. Blue skies and autumnal warmth. William Clough and the Ashop valley. William Clough, a notorious climb up to Ashop Head, the route of an ancient path from Hayfield to the Snake Inn. Yesterday’s post featured Ashop Clough, down which the Snake Path descends. On the 29th May 1897, an agreement…
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Ashop Clough
A rather cloudy circuit of the Kinder Scout plateau with the clag briefly clearing on Fairbrook Naze to open up this view of Ashop Clough, a deep gorge down which the ancient path from Hayfield to the former Snake Inn passes. The aim had been to visit the newly recognised highest point of the plateau,…
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The Mass Trespass, the Pennine Way, and some new Corona Restrictions
The Kinder Scout Plateau is dotted with Gritstone boulders and rocks of all sizes that, over the ages, have been sculpted by the wind and the rain, many taking on animalistic shapes. This day marks the anniversaries of two important events in the history of access to the hills and mountains that we take for…
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River Kinder
Some may have noticed I didn’t post yesterday. While Harrogate and the Yorkshire Dales were basking in sunshine watching the cycling world championships (this was Saturday!), 50 miles away, west of the Pennines, we were suffering twenty-four hours of torrential rain. I managed to take half a dozen photos with my phone of mist-covered hills…
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Mount Famine ridge
A pre-breakfast run with the dog. And overnight someone had opened a massive parasol of cloud. The blue skies of yesterday had gone along with any view of Kinder Scout. Mount Famine was familiar to me only as a race in the fell runners calendar. Too short to justify the journey south and too close…
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Kinder Downfall
The first time I saw the Kinder Downfall was by an approach from Edale on a wet winter’s day with a howling southwesterly wind. I was 14, trusting in a youth leader taking us across the notorious boy eating peat hags of Kinder Scout plateau. Somehow we made the Kinder Gates and followed the infant…
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Laddow Rocks
Ewan MacColl, in his Manchester Rambler, famously sang that he had slept upon Crowden. But Crowden seems to be the name of the hamlet at the foot of Crowden Brook. I can’t find a moor or hill named Crowden. Perhaps he meant Laddow Rocks, a range of gritstone crags overlooking Crowden Great Brook. When MacColl…
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Chew Reservoir
It’s been a long day. At the crack of dawn this morning I was on the high Pennine moors above Oldham. Maybe it was a dream. I came across Chew Reservoir quite suddenly out of the swirling morning mist. When full it holds 200 million gallons of water but the current level is substantially lower.…
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Tintwistle
Sunshine on Arnfield Low Moor, north of Tintwistle in Derbyshire. I must admit I hadn’t appreciated the county extended as far north as this. Obviously, the “moor” has been enclosed and improved over the years to produce lush pasture for sheep and cattle. In the distance the Dark Peak itself: Bleaklow. Apparently Tintwistle is pronounced…
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Mermaid’s Pool
Local legend says that a mermaid lives in this pond on the otherwise steep boulder strewn hillside below Kinder Downfall and tries to entice visitors into the water. Apparently several people have succumbed to her charms over the years. And if any refuse she’ll drag them into the depths. Of course all this is supposed…