Kinder with the Rangers

4.3.12
Walking with; Simon Huddlestone from The Peak District Rangers


I was back at Kinder this weekend for the first of my "pre-walks" as part of my bid to become a Peak District Ranger. I am starting to see why people love what I'd always considered a big, ugly lump quite so much. We set off from the Briefing Centre at Bowden Bridge after visiting the plaque that immortalises the Kinder trespassers. We headed back the way I'd come on Wednesday, along the Sett valley and up Coldwell Clough, even at this stage we could see the snow dusting the tops and Simon warned me that conditions might be pretty bad on Kinder. Walking with a Ranger of 30 years standing was informative and Simon told me a lot about the industrial history of the area and how Hayfield used to be famous for printworks due to the quality of the water in the local rivers. We climbed up to the Edale Cross with a bitter wind driving the snow into our faces and decided that we'd head for the relative shelter of Edale Rocks for some lunch.
On Wednesday I'd followed The Pennine Way but today we headed along the brilliantly named Swine's Back tramping through the virgin snow and following a tumbledown wall to the Rocks where we wedged ourselves into a sheltered-ish spot and considered our options. Although the visibility was poor, it was better than in the fog on Wednesday so we continued on to the Kinder Cairn and head down, battling into the wind, we carried on towards Red Brook. Red Brook was running fast and although the snow was still falling we'd come across a few other walkers and so decided to press on towards the Kinder Downfall and aim for a descent at William Clough. We spotted a couple of hardy Grouse by the Downfall and the views from the edge down towards Broad Clough and the Kinder Reservoir were fantastic. We decided to drop down into the valley just before William Clough and although the conditions underfoot were very slippery we made our way down towards the Reservoir and a welcome brew in the shelter of the valley. Simon told me a few more tales about the area, including the fact that before the Kinder reservoir Hayfield wasn't connected to the sewerage system and as a reward for the inconvenience that building the reservoir caused the village was finally connected to mains drainage. We headed back along the reservoir watching a flock of 14 Curlews before the Kinder Road took us back in the shade of Kinder Bank Wood to our starting point, cold, wet but exhilarated!
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Tideswell and the Seven Dales

22.2.12

Walking with; Nobody

This was the first proper outing for the knee since the operation in mid-January and it passed it with a few creaks and groans. Tideswell is famous for the Church of St.John the Baptist which is so impressive in scale it has been named "The Cathedral of the Peaks". It was built during the latter half of the 14th Century on the site of an old Norman chapel (parts of which were incorporated into the current building). Sir Samson Meverill, who fought against Joan of Arc, is buried in a magnificent tomb in the chancel and also laid to rest there is Bishop Robert Purseglove who became rich during Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries and whose estate still pays a small stipend to Tideswell school to this day. It's well worth a visit and a handy spot to get out of the rain. The village is also famous for a fantastic bakery, "Tindall's of Tideswell", one of the best refuelling stops in the area.

I left the village with the rain coming down and headed through Tideswell Dale, the site of an old basalt quarry with sculptures along the flat, pleasant riverside trail. There is an avenue of magnificent Beech trees and there were plenty of finches and long-tail tits darting in and out of the vegetation. The path continued into Miller's Dale and the picturesque hamlet of Litton Dale. The original mill sited there was notorious for the conditions in which the indentured "apprentices", usually children from the work house, were required to work, but the hamlet now has an air of gentility with woodsmoke curling from the chimneys of the stone cottages.

Leaving Litton Dale, the path climbed through woodland before crossing The Monsal Trail and continuing a steep ascent into Priestcliffe Lees Nature Reserve. The paths were wet and muddy restricting the pace of progress and making a coffee perched on some old lead workings with a view of the valley below a welcome respite......until the rain came again. I pressed on to another tiny farming hamlet called Brushfield, now mostly holiday lets by the look of things but with some beautiful snowdrops in the woods. The path continued on above Taddington Dale, a densely wooded valley, before dropping down to rejoin The Monsal Trail at the spectacular eponymous viaduct which has great views of the River Wye and Monsal Dale and on a better day would have been ideal for some lunch. I followed The Monsal Trail for about a mile, it runs along the route of an old Midland Railways line (complete with tunnels), passing the ghostly abandoned platform of Monsal Dale station before leaving it at the Cressbrook tunnel and dropping down to Cressbrook Mill at the head of Hay Dale. The mill is now a very smart conversion, but the mill-race still flows alongside the footpath and it isn't hard to imagine it in it's prime producing textiles for Richard Arkwright and, later, McConnel and Co.

The rain was coming down even harder now so the relative shelter afforded by the woodland in Cressbrook Dale was a welcome relief. Cressbrook is evidence that the rain is not an occasional visitor here. Every surface of wall, tree, root, even the ground itself is covered in lush, spongy, vivid green moss and it gives the wooded dale a distinctly Middle Earth feel to it. Leaving the woodland I followed the river up the valley before crossing the stepping stones and climbing the short, steepish ascent through Tansley Dale, home of more abandoned lead workings, to be met with spectacular views of the area. Dry stone walling is still a craft much in evidence in this part of the world and the fields are neatly parcelled up by some fantastic examples of this slowly dying art.

Last stop before Tideswell was Litton, a picture perfect village with a green, characterful cottages and a pub, The Red Lion, that was such a perfect approximation of a country inn that it would have been criminal to pass it by, so I didn't. Log fires, quiet, relaxed atmosphere and a pint of "BG Sips" gave me the fortitude to head off on the last mile of my journey back to Tideswell and a visit to the bakery..

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Bempton Cliffs

12.2.12

Walking with;Ruth

I thought the perfect walk for a rehabilitating knee would be a nice gentle stroll along an East Yorkshire coastal path with the chance to observe a few early season seabirds as a decent bonus. A walk was necessary after nearly a month of inactivity not to mention some superb Haddock and Chips in Bridlington and a Mixed Grill at The Ship Inn in Dunstall that would have stopped a lion in its track such was the ferocious amount of meat piled high on my plate. The only fly in the ointment for this plan was that snowfall during the week, coupled with Arctic winds whistling in off the North Sea had covered the path with a freezing, slushy mess, none-the-less we pressed on undeterred.

Bempton Cliffs is a flagship RSPB reserve and between April and August over 200,000 seabirds including Puffins, Guillemots, Razorbills, Gannets and Fulmars nest on the cliff faces of this spectacular headland. We were a little early in the year,but there were numerous Gannets flying in squadrons of four or more, and plenty of fulmars surfing the freezing thermals (if that's not a contradiction in terms)! The walking was good, the path wound along the cliff top very close to the edge and with conditions underfoot slippy, concentration was required.

On the other side from the cliff edge the ruins of RAF Bempton stood stark against the skyline and provided a moody and atmospheric backdrop for our expedition. RAF Bempton was first set up during World War Two as a GCI station and soldiered on in various different forms until it was eventually closed in 1972. Whilst the area is sealed off it looked well worth an exploration and had a distinctly "ghost townish" feel about it.

Anyway, the knee survived in spite of a few skids and slips and will hopefully be ready for some more adventurous walks over the next week or two. Come Walk with Me is back on track!

To view the full album please click on the link below;

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