Hope, Castleton, Mam Tor, Lose Hill

Date: 24 July 2010

Area: Derbyshire Peaks, Hope
Distance: 9.3 Miles, 15 k
Start Location: Car Park in Hope (opposite the Woodbine Café)
OS Sheet: Explorer OL1
Grid Ref: SK 1709 8348
Outline: Hope, Castleton, Mam Tor, Lose Hill

See route and get GPX file from Every Trail





Route
From the centre of Hope take the road south over the bridge to a footpath on right, follow to Castleton, along the road and left in to the centre, keep left past the Nags Head heading south up the road to Cave Dale, at Grid 135 813 turn right and right again. Continue over two roads to reach the path to Mam Tor. Past Hollins Cross, Back Tor and Lose Hill.

Head south down to Losehill Farm, through fields, small holdings, gardens and roads to reach the centre of Hope.

Journey

This walk or versions of it can be found in scores of books, guides and pamphlets, it is a Peaks classic. As a result the section between the road below Mam Tor and Hollins Cross can get pretty busy. On Saturday it was not as bad, possible because no one was keeping the exhausted masses entertained with their death defying feats of trying to run down the hill while attached to flimsy sections of parachute fabric.

Joking aside, when weather conditions allow the parachutes and hang gliders to fly it is extremely compelling viewing and I’m sure on previous visits we’ve seen a couple of dozen or more of them floating out above Mam Tor.

Back Tor and Lose Hill were peaceful enough.

The weather for us was fairly close to perfect, the early mist faded away, the clouds stayed high most of the time and for long periods the light was very good allowing the detail in the stunning landscape to be seen clearly almost to the horizon.

From Lose Hill the most noticeably route off the hill leads down to the Edale Road at Townhead Bridge which results in nearly a mile of road walking to get back in to Hope. Try swinging more to the right, across the fence line and drop down via Losehill Farm, and into the back of Hope, there are more stiles to climb this way but a lot less traffic.

For the first time in many years we had a dog with us on the walk. We’ve been looking after our son’s 1 year old Cavestie dog while the family’s on holiday so the dog came with us. Louis was a great attraction and we spoke to loads of people about him. You can’t tell in the photos but he looks like a small, short legged Labrador with lots of cheeky character.

I’ve now look Cavestie up on the internet and found this on GreatDogSite.com “The Cavestie is a hybrid dog which is a combination of two different pure breeds. It's a cross between a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and a West Highland White Terrier”, which was pretty much all we knew anyway. Apparently cross breeding to form hybrids is quite common as people told us of several like the Labradodle, the Great Dogs site lists loads.

Louis was great fun and 9 miles was at least double any distance he’d ever walked before, inevitably he slept all the way home, had his dinner and stayed in his bed till 10 Sunday morning, Typical teenager.

Hope to Grindleford

Date: 17 July 2010
Area: Derbyshire Peaks, Hathersage
Distance: 9 Miles 14.5 km
Start Location: On road leading to Grindleford Station
OS Sheet: Explorer OL1
Grid Ref: SK 2510 7871
Outline: Train to Hope, Thornhill, Bamford, Hathersage, Hathersage Moor, Grindleford

See route and get GPX file from Every Trail





Route
Catch train from Grindleford to Hope. Leave Hope Station by the footpath heading north towards to Aston, after about 300m take the path right to Thornhill. On reaching the lane head down into Thornhill, turn right then left down a narrow track, follow through to the A6013 in Bamford. Walk south to Saltergate Lane, go up the lane and across the Golf Course to Hurstclough Lane, climbing out of Hurst Clough Wood, bear right to Nether Hurst, then left, heading for Birley Farm. Go down through Cliff Wood across the valley and up the slope to St Michaels Church in Hathersage.

From the Church Lych Gate go downhill then left on the track heading for Carr Head, before there take the path on the right to Thornhill Farm, cross by the farm and down to the road. Walk uphill to the bend and follow the track up the hillside past Callow Bank. Cross the road to Higger Tor, across to Carl Wark and down to Toads Mouth, cross the road and head south through Padley Gorge to Grindleford.

Journey
I don’t know about you but I always feel there is something special in a walk that starts in one place and ends somewhere completely different; even if that was the place you left your car that morning, before catching a lift, train or bus to the star of the walk. Undoubtedly the majority of walks are, by necessity circular, but somehow they don’t you give that feeling of achievement, that sense of completing a journey that a point to point walk delivers.

I found this walk on EveryTrail posted as a walk from Grindleford to Edale by Gazza69. What struck me was that it was all north of the railway and although I had walked three short bits of it, most would be new. As Mrs O-n-G was walking with me I thought a start in Edale and back over Mam Tor would be a bit excessive, it would have to be park at Grindleford, train to Hope and walk back.


I’ve parked at Grindleford Station many times, had a quick bacon cob and mug of tea in the Café before catching the 9:29 train to Hope or Edale and walking back to Grindleford. The routes you can create in this way are numerous with a wide range of distances.


This time I was not allowed the bacon cob, but as Mrs O-n-G wanted to use the toilet I was instructed to buy us a Twix each (to qualify as customers). There were quite a few walkers and cyclists on the train and the ‘train manager’, person selling/collecting tickets had a great line in patter that had everybody smiling.

I must admit I was a bit doubtful about the quality of the walk but once we got the first few fields out the way and we picked up the views of Losehill and Shatton, Abney and Offerton Moors etc. I  felt more positive.

The route meanders up and down across the lower slopes along the north side of the Hope Valley, passing below Bamford, across to Hathersage then climbing towards Higger Tor. By the time we got to Hathersage I was really enjoying the ‘undulations’, the wooded areas, the views and the feeling of walking along tracks and byways that may have been in use for hundreds of years.

When we got to Higger Tor the wind was blowing a gale and people were starting to head for their cars. We walked right to the south east corner of the Tor where the green dotted line on the map goes down the pointy bit and we wangled and scrambled our way off the Tor through a 3D maze of rock slabs and jumbled boulders that is the public right of way.

As we left Carl Wark the rain started, with the wind forcing it near horizontal. Going down through the lovely Padely Gorge to Grindleford we met an intermittent stream of under prepared, ill dressed people and children struggling uphill  in the wind and pouring rain back to their cars.

Next time I think I’d like to try this walk again the other way Grindleford to Hope.

Winster Snitterton

Date: 10 July 2010

Area: Derbyshire Peaks, West of Matlock

Distance: 8.5 Miles 13.7 km
Start Location: Winster car park (opp. Miners Standard PH)

OS Sheet: Explorer OL24
Grid Ref: SK 2389 6023

Outline: Winster, Wensley, Snitterton, Upper Town

See route, download GPX at Every Trail

Winster is a great place to start and or finish a walk, it has good walking in almost all directions, plus the small car park is only a short stroll from the Miners Standard one of our favourite pubs in the Peaks.

Walking down through Winster, along the lanes and alleyways leading to Main Street you can’t help but notice that the layout of the buildings is a bit odd, a jumble, fascinating and very picturesque, as cottages, garages, out houses and gardens seem to spring out of each other, in some quite disconcerting positions and directions.

In July the village holds a “Secret Gardens” weekend when visitors can go around the village looking in on a number of gardens that have been ‘opened’ by the owners. It’s a great day and you start to get an understanding of how this jumble of buildings grew out of the homes of miners, quarrymen and farm workers and their families through the centuries.

On reaching the grander Main Street head east, passing well out of the village past the school, on the north side of road pick up the path dropping diagonally through fields down the hillside to a small footbridge in the corner of the field. Entering the woodland follow the stream through Clough Wood and eventually start climbing up to Oldfield Lane. About 500m down the lane a stile on the right puts you on a foot path into the woodland and then bear right across the fields into Wensley.

Turn east past “The Stone Mushroom Farm” and take the path across the fields to Snitterton with its impressive Hall, Manor House, and cottages. Head south taking the track to Leawood Farm and Leawood Cottages. This is a good uphill pull but the views are fantastic and well worth stopping for.

The area from Oldfield Lane, Wensley, Snitterton, Leawood Farm and the next section over to Upper Town all lie adjacent to the eastern boundary of the Peak Park and the whole of this quarter is a super area to walk in. It is largely farm land, mainly sheep and cattle and the views that can be had over Matlock, Darley Dale, Stanton Moor and the moors across the Derwent Valley are some of the best in the White Peak. Also it is usually fairly quiet and feels a bit undiscovered. In eight miles on a beautiful sunny day we only met 2 couples out walking.

Just where the path comes on to the road at Upper Town lies Hollies Garden Centre, where as well as plants, drinks, ice creams and provisions are for sale. The planned route from Upper Town back to Winster was to take the public footpath along Moor Lane, across Blakemere Lane, up to the west side of Blakelow Hill to bring us out on Bonsallmoor Lane just to the north of Moor Farm.

Unfortunately, two of us, both with 1/ 25,000 map and different GPS’s  managed to get into a major navigation faff between Blakemere Lane, and Blakelow Hill where we ended up two fields to the east of the Trig pillar. We should have been three fields to the west. The excuses were many, poor sign posting, trusting GPS’s, talking too much, the heat, getting lazy at the end of the walk, bad eye sight, magnetic interference from the lead mines, but in reality it came down to not keeping good map contact in a detailed area, not counting off the fields and not checking our direction as we crossed each wall. That is basic stuff that we’ve done correctly many times before. (The GPX File available above shows the correct route)

Once we sorted ourselves out we took the footpath from Bonsallmoor Lane across the fields downhill and uphill across Bonsall Lane and uphill and downhill to the Limestone Way and back to Winster for a well-earned pint at the Standard.

NOTE to self take even more pictures and use the 1/25,0000 map more effectively.

National Memorial Arboretum Yoxall

Date: 4 July 2010
Area: Staffordshire North of Litchfield
Distance: 10.5 Miles 16.8 k
Start Location: National Memorial Arboretum car park
OS Sheet: Explorer 245
Grid Ref: SK 1814 1483
Outline: National Memorial Arboretum, Alrewas, Yoxall





The idea for the walk this weekend, or at least its general location came from reading a recent post on Mike & Gail’s Blog Here of a walk they did taking in the National Memorial Arboretum. Then, while looking at the map, I spotted the village of Yoxall, where in 1990, when working for Civil Engineering consultants I designed a small bit of a new sewerage system.

So a plan was formed; park at the NMA, walk through Alrewas, following the footpaths along the south side of the River Trent, up into Yoxall and back to Alrewas down the Staffordshire Way then around Croxall Lakes and through the NMA for a look around.

Ten minutes into the walk we came to the A38 and a piece of advice given to me years ago immediately came to mind “treat motorways and major roads like deep rivers, only with fewer bridges”. Thankfully, there were gaps in the multiplicity of Armco and other barriers that protects the motorists from straying pedestrians, so we crossed.

Alrewas (I have no idea how to pronounce the name) was very quiet and rather an attractive place with a whole range of period architecture from 16th Century right through to modern. There are a number of timber framed properties in classic black and white, some in unpainted timber with brick infill panels as well as a few thatched cottages, also some pretty gardens.

We walked through the village, over the canal and past the church to set off across the Trent flood plane, along a path carefully hidden at the end of a road to the north west of the church. The journey from there to Yoxall Bridge was a bit of a mixed bag. There were some pleasant sections and we saw swans, cows, dragon flies and herons but so much of the land was lying thistle strewn and unused. Some stiles were in poor condition and the way marking was sparse so that careful map reading was necessary to stay on route.

Don’t mention the oilseed rape.

At Yoxall Bridge we took the old road over the Trent and went uphill picking a route through the new woodland to the highest point on the walk at 87m. Dropping down into Yoxall we crossed the A515 and picked up the Staffordshire Way down through Wychnor Park, crossing the Rivers Swarbourn and Trent via two rather disconcerting bridges into Alrewas.

Along the Staffordshire Way we reached an elevation of 75m along the track out of Yoxall and 67m near to Wychnor Park. There was some good walking here with views over the Trent Valley, but these good bits were again offset by the poor state of some fields, the meagre way marking and dysfunctional stiles. Through  Wychnor Park the route was pure guess work, plus a bit of help from a golfer.

From the River Trent we followed an agreeable path along the north edge of the village until we hit the A38. Using discretion we retreated to the crossing point we used earlier, missing out Croxall Lakes, and headed back to the National Memorial Arboretum. By the time we bought a guide book, used the toilets, had a cup of tea and a cake and went to look at the Royal Engineers memorial, it started to rain, so back to the car, via the shop where, so I’m told, they have a lot of Thomas Joseph mugs and things, why?

Another visit to the Arboretum and Alrewas, plus Croxall Lakes is already planned.

Note to self: Use 1/25000 maps and take more photos