Note: This walking report contains my humour, the occasional prevarication, exaggeration and definitely contains nuts.
Date of Walk - 15th August 2009
Conditions - Drizzle, Rain, bit heavier rain, drizzle, cloud then some sun!
Distance - 9.5 Miles over path, moor and field
Sunburn factor - None. New cowboy(ish) style headgear sorts that out. Now I just feel like I should have some six guns pardner.
Dog factor - Present.
Krypton Factor - Whatever happened to that?
This walk came about at fairly short notice, mainly due to the Met Office not being able to make up their minds. So Friday night we decided to go even though we expected some rain. After much scouring of Memory Map I couldn't make something up that
a) Wasn't Dovedale (We're going back cos it's a nice walk but not during the summer hols)
b) Monsal dale (not pleasant in the wet)
c) More than 6 miles.
Whilst I was blazing a trail across the Dark Peak, in a virtual sense, I noticed Crook Hill. Now cloud was expected at 500m for a chunk of the day so I didn't want anything too high. Crook Hill looked ideal. But how to get a walk in around 8miles without much road walking? Ahh I know we'll take in Win Hill on the way. It was obviously a tad more than 8 but I just didn't tell my walking bud
Just kidding course I told him... Afterwards... when I realised I'd miscalculated.
So we parked up in the Severn Trent Heatherdene car park and waited for the now moderate rain to subside - as there's no point getting soaked and then getting into waterproofs. Plus it had been raining on and off for the past 30 minutes, gladly it was more off than on. After about 15 minutes it stopped and brightened up a bit. So whilst one of us got into boots etc I took the dog a brief walk to warm him up and buy a car park ticket. Well as there was no machine to pay for parking I can only suppose it was free!
Heatherdene has some great facilities with some excellent toilets. The only ones I've seen better were at Dalby Forest and you have to pay to enter Dalby. On the way back from using the facilities, almost in keeping with the 'Wierdest Things' thread, were a group of youths wandering around in varying states of undress, getting changed for some watery activity on Ladybower no doubt. Not the kind of view I was expecting to see, which brings me to my first image.
Route courtesy of me, OS Map courtesy of crown copyright.
You expected semi clad folk? Shame on you! It took a lot of effort not to come over all Frankie Howerd in the run up text I can tell you.
From the car park you could see our way back - Not exactly Yorkshire Bridge and Crook Hill.
So we started in fine condition, rain just gone, some a distance away but the wind was strong so if it did hit us we'd not have to put up with it long. I was, of course, 86% wrong on this.
Still for the novety factor we ended up walking across the reservoir embankment (the GPS had a mad minute and at one point we were walking in the middle of the res though). Some interesting iron work and slightly different view for us at least. The water level was very low as well. Still a 'top up' was threatening in the distance.
The wind was blowing the rain from the showers in the last picture onto us. It was a strange feeling having rain beating your left hand side whilst the sun warms your right. No rainbow though
We decided not to attempt Parkins Clough in it's entirety due to the short hairy legged one, so as we made our way around Ladybower the rain came. Drizzle at first.
Then heavier rain.
Then drizzle again.
We made the woods though. I'd deliberately included lots of 'we can escape to the trees if it rains' bits purely for this purpose. Unfortunately the trees are too far apart here to actually give much shelter. So we got midly moist.
After around 40 minutes of drizzle and slightly heavier rain it appears the rain had decided to stay. So we started to put the waterproofs on. Well you can guess what happened. Ofcourse it stopped raining. So as we started climbing up to Win Hill it was to an awful lot of wind, but sunshine (on a rainy day etc etc).
When we eventually got to the top you could see the sun breaking through in places, but low cloud surrounding the areas we were heading towards. Still trees had been planned so we had some cover (as long as they were close enough together ofcourse) if we needed it.
From Win Hill.
Usually you would keep to the path here but so we were near the tree lines for rain related escapes we decided to cut across the moor instead. There were paths and it was an easy walk, even if the dog did occasionally disappear as the heather engulfed him. Still, it made him smell nice.
Eventually we made it to the woods around Wooller Knoll and sat down for a sandwich or three.
Whilst chewing we did have a great view of the way ahead.
Eventually the path (one of which is on the map but doesn't exist on the ground, thanks OS! Your fiction dept is truly legendary) takes you by a river feeding Ladybower. A pleasant contrast to moors and woods.
Soon enough we spy the approach to Crook Hill. Which looks disturbingly steeper than the OS map gradients suggest.
Steep? Very. From the bridge the foot path dips, then climbs a couple of hundred metres in half a mile or so. Not so much a sting in the tail as a kick in the *******.
Also it is now pretty hot which added to the "fun".
Thankfully though the difficult and steep bit passes quickly enough giving you a view back towards Kinder and Black Hill/Bleaklow that wouldn't look out of place in the Lakes.
Lose Hill in the opposite direction looking exceedingly lush after it's cap of low cloud earlier.
In front Crook Hill. Originally we intended to go up, but it is walled off, and the farmer was around which kind of nixed that idea. The additional mile and half may have had some input as well.
Now for something a leetle bit arty (it's supposed to be dark, so don't adjust your set).
After that bout of pretension normal service is resumed as we get our first glimpse of the end of the walk. I don't know about you but it always give me a boost knowing that despite it being a great walk (and it was) the end and a cup of tea is in sight.
We had a few navigational choices to make though.
The end is getting even closer.
So far we'd walked the planned route. However we now had two opposing alternative routes! We took the alternative, alternative route (basically we went right)
Now we approached our penultimate bridge. At this point I was trying to remember if it had a pedestrian pavement or not.
It did! Which allowed me to get some excellent shots, especially as the sun sinking giving very different lighting from East to West. On the Bridge if I looked West the sun was reflecting off the water giving a subdued feeling. Looking East was like midday.
As we approached the car park I took a couple of final shots. Win Hill, Crook Hill and both together.
A fantastic and varied walk through paths, woods, moors, fells and hillside. Whilst the wind was a constant companion the rain kept off after the beginning giving us a fine days walking.
A slightly challenging but excellent route.
© Dazza 2009