Edale Skyline Walk

The idea for this walk came to me as I sat on the bus home after the Marsden to Hope adventure.  Why not walk from Lose Hill to Win Hill round the head of Edale?  Notwithstanding the fact that I may have an eye for a good walk, I found it hard to believe nobody had done this in the last 2 million years since the valley was probably carved during the last ice age. After two days of googling for Edale Horseshoe, Edale Circuit and Edale Round  (not continuously you understand - I'm not that sad),  I finally happened on Edale Skyline Walk. That was the one.  It was a fell race.  Well blow that for a game of a soldiers.  I was going to take 2 days over it and camp in the middle.  Then I emailed Mike 'NorthernPies' Knipe to see if he was interested.  "20 miles sounds a bit far for 1 day".  Yes, yes but we're going to camp in the middle, says I, so it's only 10 miles a day plus a bit of climbing.  We'd set off in Hope (and no little expectation) and go in a clockwise direction from Lose Hill to Win Hill on the other side of the village (cos it sounded so much better to end on a winner than a loser).

Some History (sourced from the internet)
Win Hill and Lose Hill get their name from the Battle of Win Hill and Lose Hill in 626. Prince Cwichelm (or Cuicholm) and his father, King Cynegils of Wessex, possibly with the aid of King Penda of Mercia, gathered their forces on Lose Hill and marched on the the rival Northumbrian army led by King Edwin of Northumbria camped across the valley on Win Hill. Despite their superior numbers, Wessex was defeated by the Northumbrians building a wall and rolling boulders down upon them. The Northumbrians were heard to say in that pub that night that it was a 'reight good trundle' (they'd picked up a bit of a Derbyshire accent).

 And so it was that Mike got the train to Hope and I drove out from Sheffield to find him in a pub.  Following a really bad night's sleep on the Laneside campsite under a searchlight with the power of a small thermonuclear device and the noise of trains, quarry waggons and the 7am dustcart, I suggested that we should do breakfast at the Woodbine Cafe.  And we did.  And it was huge and it was good.  Thus it was 10:30 by the time we set off up Lose Hill.  Not exactly a crack of sparrow fart start but then we didn't want to reach our camp site too early anyway. 

From Lose Hill looking west towards Mam Tor

We plodded up Lose Hill, we scampered along the ridge, we got buffeted on Mam Tor and found a sheltered spot at Windy Gap for a snack. Then we plodded some more over Rushup Edge and met an attractive yound girl on Lord's Seat offering us chocolate biscuits.  She was later seen with her boyfriend sinking thigh deep into the only boggy spot on Brown Knoll.  We stopped for lunch at that place where the Brown Knoll to Kinder Low track crosses the Jacobs Ladder to Edale Cross path and all signs point to the Pennine Way.  This place must have a name but I don't know what it is, so in any future blogs I shall refer to it as Bert.  Then we passed a woman with angel wings and then some more, until by the time we reached the trig point on Kinder Low we might have been in heaven.  And in fact Mike was, as he'd just clocked up his thousand'th walking mile for the year and we celebrated with a small sip of whisky, which the Pieman is known to carry at all times, purely for medicinal purposes.

Mike in heaven on Kinder Low - 1000 miles, Angel in one hand, whisky in the other
















Kinder Downfall was a 'no fall' and the stream had even less water in it than three weeks earlier when I'd camped up here.  We found my previous camping spot, I moved the same boulder, which I'd previously replaced and we'd set up Akto alley by 4pm.

Akto Alley

The aircraft noise I mentioned in the earlier blog was augmented this time by the sounds of the wind, of motorbikes going over the Snake Pass and of Mike humming to music on his mp3 player. Then suddenly, there was silence - until that is, my tinnitus started up.

Sunday morning was foggy.  Very foggy.  And the tents were covered in lots of dew on the outside and lots of condensation on the the inside.  We were away by 9:30, after putting the boulder back in it's hole, and wandered up the beck admiring the sand backs and canyon walls made of peat. 

Peat Canyoning on Kinder Scout

Aiming a bit west of south we navigated across the watershed without incident and before long arrived at the top of Crowden Clough.  Turning left we ambled some more through the fog passing groups of walkers, each one increasingly witless about where they were and where they wanted to be, until we reached Hope Cross (but only after being slightly witless ourselves and ignoring a perfectly respectable footpath sign in favour of a dubious compass bearing taken from the OS 1:50,000 along what appeared to be a more direct path). 

Mike on Kinder Edge

Me on Kinder Edge

Mam Tor from the southern edge of Kinder Scout

And that just left the easy graded ridge to the summit of Win Hill, some final pics, a laugh at a group of sixth formers setting up tents on a 30 degree slope and a knee-wrecking descent back to Hope where we were revived by a very large pot of tea and a life threatening piece of cake at the other cafe, whose name escapes me (Blue something I think).

Win Hill and a very large trig point (or was it a very small Mike?)








 A damned fine walk in excellent company.  Thanks Mike.

Saturday: 10.1 miles and 2664' ascent (Mike reckons 12 miles and less ascent)
Sunday: 10 .2 miles and 955' ascent
Total: 20.3 miles 3619' ascent

Mike's blog of this walk is here

Hayfield and Kinder Scout (again)

Kinder Scout seems to have become a magnet for me this year and, to overdo the use of metaphor, I find myself drawn to it like a moth to flame for the forth time in 2009 - with yet another trip planned in a couple of weeks time.

This was a short afternoon walk with a friend on, what in Sheffield, started out as cloudy day but was sunny and blustery on the western side of the Pennines.

We set off from the car park at Bowden Bridge Quarry, just up the hill from the village, which to my shame I didn't realise until we got back to the car, was the start of the Kinder Mass Tresspass. 

Plaque commemorating the Mass Trespass of 24 April 1932

It took a bit of bumbling to get out of the valley onto the right path, which at one point had us walking away from KInder Scout instead of towards it and wasn't helped by a chap on a bike who was also lost and stopped to ask us directions.  Isn't it always the case - you visit a new place and someone asks you the way.

 Looking towards Brown Knoll

As it was our target was a bit fluid and in the end we skirted the south west flank of Mount Famine and headed up to Brown Knoll.  From there we ambled along the ridge, shouting to be heard over the noise of wind and watching our speech bubbles blow away across the open moors.  Reaching the fence, we made a turned left at the wobbly stile that leads to the Brown Knoll trig point and headed for the path up from Jacobs Ladder.  Then on to Edale Cross, which we seemed to have walked past without noticing and, pausing for a light lunch, walked back down to the car park via Kinderlow End.  This side of Kinder is new to me and needs some further exploration.  Our route seems to be a popular Sunday afternoon walk.  There were certainly a lot of walkers and mountain bikers to be seen.

Descent back into Hayfield

I am curious about the origin of the name Mount Famine but searches on Google and Wikipedia have drawn a blank - what hope is there for the world when one can't find the answers there?!  There appears to be an annual fell race up it, which someone commented was quite hard.  I thought was the point about fell racing.  If it were easy, even I would do it.

Pleasant walk in good company and fine views of the eastern gritstone edges on the way home.

Some walks pose risks from giant local fauna

6.5 miles and 1450' ascent

Marsden to not quite Edale and not quite Sheffield

It was a simple plan. It was an audacious plan. It was a not terribly well thought out plan. It was to take the train from Sheffield to Marsden on Friday after work and use the bank holiday weekend to back Home along the Pennine Way to Edale and by some route as yet undecided back to Sheffield. Marsden - Edale is a classic South Pennine challenge walk, normally done in a day. Well that was never going to happen and in any case I wanted an excuse to do some wild camping.

I'd been following the five day forecast for tyhe previous few days and whilst it never said it would be 'cracking flags' for the bank holiday weekend (but then it rarely does), there was nothing worse than light rain. So I packed the bag Thursday night and booked the train ticket online. So it was settled. I had to go now - I wasn't wasting £8.50.

Leaving Marsden - the view from Binn Lane. I set out with my poo trowel to dig up a pot of gold.

The plan started well. I walked out of the office at 16:25pm on Friday afternoon down to the station and boarded the 16:38pm train moments before it pulled away from the platform. We stopped at every station in South Yorkshire and quite a few in West Yorkshire to reach Huddersfield, where a slight faff with platforms got me on the cattle truck to Marsden, seconds before it pulled away from the platform. So far so good, With the help of some details from a website, I navigated down the hill from Marsden station to the start of the Kirkless Trail, up the side of the Wessenden reservoirs.

Directions

For future reference, go down Station Road, right into Church Lane (past the church), bear right at Weir Side and cross the A62 into Fall Lane, then over another road into Binn Lane where after a short uphill section past some terraced houses, you peel off right onto the track up the side of the first reservoir. Useful road signs proved to be a bit sparse, so it's a good idea to check it on Multimap before you set out.

The gradient was nice and steady and I soon passed the first reservoir when it started to rain. I stopped under a tree to put on waterproofs and it stopped raining. I left them on and it didn't rain again. The plan was to camp somewhere around the top reservoir the first night and I got the tent up around 8:30am, in a reasonably out of the way spot. It was a blustery night and I woke up at 3am to what I thought was a voice saying, "I've just got to sort this out". Expecting a shotgun to appear through the tent, I slid further into my sleeping bag and tried to look inconspicuous and eventually convinced myself that it was my imagination. I woke again before 7am, not terribly refreshed and after an unappetising breakfast of noodles, packed up and set off just after 8am.

Friday night campsite

The Travel Tap

Mike Knipe had warned me that the water around the Wessenden reservoirs was very brown, more as a caution against camping there, I think. He wasn't wrong but I had a secret weapon - the Travel Tap I'd bought from Bobcast Pod's online shop (http://www.backpackinglight.co.uk/). I'd used it at Gaping Gill the previous weekend but this was going to be it's first real test.

The Travel Tap - water bottle with built-in filter - and the Wessenden water before filtering

The water after filtering. Notice how the Travel Tap conveniently morphs into a Pocket Rocket ready for a brew (it doesn't really).

The podcast does mention that if the water is really dirty you should let the crud settle in a pan before filtering with the Tap. I wasn't sure how dirty, really dirty had to be and I'd just put it straight through the filter. Later in the day, on Bleaklow, I started to have problems. It needed a lot of squeezing to get anything out and unfiltered water was leaking past the seal. I was worried I may have blocked it. After dismantling the filter and rinsing it with some cleaner water, it seemed to improve and for the rest of the trip I did some pre-filtering with a fabric filter bag. On the second day I was forced to get water from a fairly stagnant looking pond in a peat bog and the Tap performed brilliantly and it was my sole source of clean drinking water for 3 days.

It was a short walk up to the A635, with fine views back down the Wessenden valley and across to Black Hill. It's a lonely and desolate piece of road - it must be really grim in winter. Looking at the map, I realised for the first time how close I was to Saddleworth Moor, which had gained notoriety in the 60s as the scene of the moors murders. It reminded me that in ancient times people buried their dead in remote places, in the belief that it would be too far for the spirits to come back to haunt them. The Lyke Wake Walk on the N Y Moors was supposedly an old coffin route and there are many high places in Derbyshire such Ringinglow, Arbour Low, Bleaklow and Kinder Low, where the name, 'low', suggests an ancient burial site. These were chilling thoughts and it was time to make tracks.

Wessenden Head

Black Hill from Wessenden Head

Following the Pennine Way signs, I easily picked up the track to Black Hill, which being mostly paved to the edge of the plateau, meant I was at the trig point by 9am.

Summit of Black Hill

I'd been up here with Mike Knipe in June (see his blog) from the Crowden side, which is where I was heading now. Now the route for Marsden to Edale that I'd found on the web went via Soldiers Lump and Tooleyshaw Moss and this has a big advantage over the Pennine Way route I was about to take, which rises up from the valley floor by about 200' to get over Laddow Rocks. It looks much further as the valley cuts down at the same time. Anyway, by the time I'd appreciated the wisdom of the Tooleyshaw route, it was too late.

Laddow Rocks

Generally though, the plan was still holding up. A brief stop before Crowden was required to replenish falling blood sugar levels and then onward, to cross the second road of the day, the Woodhead Pass. The web description then proposed climbing to Bleaklow Head via Wildboar Clough but a) there is no footpath marked on the 1:50,000 and b) it looked stupidly steep. Anyway, the plan was to follow the Pennine Way so eschewing the wild boar, I headed up Torside Clough.

Torside Clough

This wasn't without its own lung wrenching, steep section and whilst looking back to note how far I'd climbed out of the valley, I also remembered I'd forgotten to pick up water. Whilst pondering this state of affairs and swishing the remaining dribble round in the water bottle, hoping in some way this would increase its volume, a student type person came breezing down the track towards me. He'd set off from Edale that morning and it was only one o'clock now. I couldn't see any sign of a jet pack but I can think of no other explanation for his rapid progress. How I despise the young and the fit! I pushed on up and it wasn't long before I found a small trickle of water running across a rock. It was Travel Tap time. Refreshed, I pressed on estimating I should reach Bleaklow Head by 2pm.

The Wain Stones

Bleaklow Head

At some point I should have crossed the main stream but missed it, which meant I arrived the Wain Stones before the pole at Bleaklow Head. It made no difference, the plan was still good. I checked the compass for a vaguely southerly direction and headed off towards the A57. After a brief stop for a pie, I felt energised like a Duracell bunny as I emerged onto the top of the Snake Pass to a throng of people and another student backpacker heading northwards with a voluminous backpack and his provisions in a Morrisons carrier bag. This was no place to hang around.

I've always liked the sound of Featherbed Moss, as a concept, but worried about its potential to swallow up unsuspecting walkers. It seems that the National Park must have had the same concern, as they have lain flagstones across it from just after leaving the A57 to the top of Ashop Head. That's just about 2 miles of path across the moor and an awful lot of patio stone. I couldn't help thinking that the Romans would have been proud of them.

Now this is where the plan was a bit fluid. I had two places in mind to camp for the night. One was by Mermaid's Pool, below Kinder Downfall and the other was on the plateau itself, at a place just upstream from the Downfall, which Joe and I had spotted earlier in the month. Mermaid's Pool didn't look easy to get to and would have involved thrashing through heather and who knows what else, so I climbed onto the plateau and walked round the edge to the top of Downfall, which for the second time this month, was virtually dry. I found a sheltered, flat spot off the side of the main stream. It was 8 o'clock and I was ready to call it a day - a twelve hour day, in fact.

Saturday night campsite

Kinder Scout is not a peaceful place to camp. Notwithstanding any wind and rain which might happen past, there are aircraft flying low overhead, in and out of Manchester airport, late into the night. Lying in a tent there are times when you can feel the peat vibrating from the engine noise. Before finally going to bed I thought I should fill up the water bottles.   I only went about 10 yards from the tent to the stream and then couldn't find my way back in the dark and mist.

From here the plan started to become even more wobbly. I needed to turn east for Sheffield at some point but to complete a Marsden - Edale crossing I should really drop down to Edale the next morning, which would have meant either a walk along the valley or a climb back onto one of the ridges on either side. Neither were appealing. If I didn't go to Edale I could stay high and head for either of Win Hill (via the southern edge of Kinder) or Lose Hill via Brown Knoll and Mam Tor. Also wild camping in the Hope Valley would be tricky at the best of times but on Bank Holiday Sunday was a bit of a non-starter. I didn't fancy a commercial campsite, other than North Lees and that was at least 15 miles away. As I was still 20 miles from home, the decision was easy - head for Lose Hill, then into Hope to catch the bus back to Sheffield. It was still a good plan, even if it wasn't the original plan. It was the brand new, 'stay high' plan. Break out the spliff.

Kinder Low

The morning started very misty and I started very slowly but I had all signs of my camp cleared away and was back on the trail by 8:30am. I had the Kinder Low trig point to myself and only started to see folk as I approached Edale Cross. After passing over Brown Knoll I started to consider the water situation again. I needed to fill up soon as there were no more streams for the rest of the route to Hope. It was just after that, that I found the evil looking, stagnant pool replete with wiggly things and scummy bits. Well, nothing ventured and I'm still alive to write this, so the Travel Tap must have worked.

The ridge of bumpy bits stretching to Lose Hill

Hanging a left onto the ridge above Rushup Edge I encountered the weekend hoards of mountain bikers and walking groups. I started out with a cheery hello for each but soon wearied of it and just kept my head down. Looking north (with my head up again) I could see where I'd come from and looking east was today's route, stretched out in front, a fine ridge with oh so many bumpy bits along it.

Back Tor

So on I bumped, over Lord's Seat, Mam Tor, Hollins Cross (where is the cross anyway?), Back Tor and finally Lose Hill.

And finally...Lose Hill

I dropped (well more like sagged) down into Hope around 2pm and hit the first tea shop I came across and in doing so missed the bus by 5 minutes. To while away the next 55 minutes I looked in a gear shop, which was madness as I came out with a book on Fort William to Cape Wrath (and a useful, small red beacon, so I can find the tent in the dark)

Then, home to get cleaned up, have dinner, have another dinner and watch Wuthering Heights (which, if I'm not mistaken, has Cathy and Heathcliffe on the top of Burbage Edge near the start of the first episode).

Friday night: 3.6 miles 1065' ascent

Saturday: 18 miles 3625' ascent

Sunday 10.4 miles 1360' acsent

Total: 32 miles 6060' ascent

A tale of two tents and a walk up Kinder Scout

My shiny new Hilleberg Akto had arrived from Ray Mears online shop (lovingly packed by Ray, I assume) and I was looking for an excuse to try it out. My offspring were with me for some of the school hols, so I packed daughter back to her Mum's for the night and son and I headed for Upper Booth. The forecast was for sunshine but as we left the house, the weather looked umpromising. By Upper Booth it still looked unpromising but at least we could see the hills, so after quickly pitching tents, we set off.

A digression about tents:

Joe's tent is a Robens Stardust 1. It cost about £50 in a sale. They don't make it any more, which is a real pity as even at full price it's a superb one person tent. I used it on the TGO Challenge in May and my only real gripe with it was that the porch was a bit small to cook in. It's the same basic topography as the Akto: side opening, 'double wedge' with a single central hoop pole and 4 short poles at the corners. The pegging and guy arrangements are similar. It weighs 2kg, which is 0.5kg more than the Akto.

Before the TGOC, I knew nothing of Hilleberg tents. The Akto is almost the tent of choice amongst challengers and now I've got one I can see why. It's a Tardis tent -it's bigger on the inside than out! I think the living area could sleep two at a pinch and the porch is easily big enough to cook under with the door closed - even though, of course, one should never do such a thing! I 'm already luvvin my new Akto but I'd still give 4 stars to the Robens (and 5 stars for the Hilleberg).



Back to the plot:

Armed with sufficient food for an extended trip (2 chicken pies, 2 white slime pasties, cheese and Marmite sandwiches, apples, and copious amounts of chocolate), we headed south out of the campsite, in the opposite direction from Kinder Scout, which may seem perverse but I wanted to take in Brown Knoll (569m) en route. The track towards Rushup Edge is a bit confusing to begin with, passing through a few fields and skirting round a couple of farms. Once we got to the National Trust info centre (which was shut), the path becomes more obvious and we started to break out into open land proper and climb steeply, crossing the Sheffield to Manchester line, which goes through a tunnel around here. From the top of the climb, two right turns finally had us going in the right direction.


The weather was still gloomy and even threatened rain. Some (well, a lot of) splodging across the moor, crossing the same tunnel again) got us to the Brown Knoll trig point, which suffers from being sited in the middle of a peat bog, making it problematic to escape if one is foolish enough to sit on it.

Up to this point, we had seen only one other group of people but as we neared the top of Jacob's Ladder the hoards appeared, mostly day-trippers like ourselves rather than Pennine Wayers. A quick bite to eat and we set off for Kinder Low and the second trig point of the day, which is more conveniently placed on top of a lump of gritstone.

The rest of the plan was to head for the Downfall and then follow the beck upstream until it ran out, cross over the top to the head of Crowden Brook and then down the clough back to the campsite. Kinder Downfall was disappointingly low on water, so the dramatic scene of a waterfall going uphill, which I'd promised the lad, was not to be.

Low water levels did mean we could walk up stream in comfort. At the first branch we encountered a group of folk staring at a map. I'd previously done some staring and knew we needed to take the left fork, which we did in a confident and manly way, ignoring their fatuous enquiry as to weather we were on the Pennine Way. This is a splendid little stream, full of character, well quite a few characters really, starting out with sandy beaches and eventually becomimg a narrow canyon with peat walls which finally saw us traversing, one foot on either wall, in caving fashion.


















Eventually we were forced to claw our way out to the surface and a scene of various people (including the aforementioned map starers) wandering in what appeared at first to be in the opposite direction to the way we wanted - until I checked the compass and found we had turned through 180 degrees during our peat canyoning.

So, setting the compass for a bit east of south, we then proceeded to walk along almost every other point on the dial in an attempt to avoid sinking into the morass. Taking navigation by 'aiming off' to extremes and after 20 minutes of floundering, back-tracking and generally faffing, we hit dry land (well rock actually) and shortly after that we happened upon the top end of Crowden Brook. I like to think this was skillfull map and compass work - and to some extent it was, mixed in with a teensy weensy bit of good fortune and the ability to see a useful horizon.

A short walk brought us to the head of the clough, which was more vertiginous than I remembered, calling for some scrambling followed by another lunch stop - to avoid the embarrassment of arriving back at camp with surplus pies! This is one of those stretchy tracks, which gets a bit longer the further along it you go. The maths are something like, for any point along it, there is half as far again to go as you think there should be. By now the sun was shining, only 6 hours after it was due and when we finnaly reached the campsite a short siesta was called for, followed by Sainsbury's insto meals with Tilda rice in a bag, another post-prandial siesta and drive to Edale for a glass of shandy.

A splendid day.

8.5 miles and 1700ft ascent.