This Week’s Walks
September 1st-7th 2024
I had a bit of a split week this time, starting off focusing on running and then going away for a few days to get some final summer walks in.
The runs were part of my training and preparation for the Langdale Half, which is now less than six weeks away, which means I have less than four weeks to get myself prepared for running it. I’m under no illusions that it’s going to hurt, but I can perhaps reduce that a little and maybe even do it faster than last time by pushing myself a bit now. So, long and slow running it was, building my endurance alongside regular swimming, with five miles run on Monday and then eight on Wednesday.
After I’d enjoyed my long weekend in Wales back in August, I’d decided to have more like that and the long-range weather forecast for the first weekend in September looked good, so at the end of August I booked myself three nights in Buxton in Derbyshire for a bit of walking in the Peak District. It’s somewhere I’d only walked sporadically in the past, but I was craving some decent hills and they were the nearest ones to me. First off, though, I went downwards rather than uphill.
The Monsal Trail is an old railway line that’s been out of use for decades. Like many of the lines closed down in the mid-Twentieth Century it now has a new use as a pathway for walkers and cyclists. It’s an easy walk, mostly level or only gentle inclines but of more interest to me, and making me stop off at the former Miller’s Dale station on my way to Buxton was what lies underneath it.
About half a mile west of Miller’s Dale as the trail heads over a bridge, a pathway heads off to the side and then straight down a stone staircase towards the River Wye below. The river was here long before the railway, carving out a path deep through the chasm of Chee Dale, following a twisting route between high stone walls and steep banks.
Generations of walkers have worn down a rocky path along the river, twisting up and down around trees, criss-crossing streams on rickety bridges and finally taking a path over stepping stones under a steep cliff face when no other route is available.
It’s only a short walk through Chee Dale — the whole thing including out and back on the Monsal Trail took me about an hour to do — but it’s a packed hour with lots to see and experience, which for me included watching someone climbing one of the stone walls of the chasm and the spookiness of a lone walk through a former railway tunnel where the signs warn you not to touch the sides and the stones seem to be growing past the brickwork at points.
But Chee Dale itself was the highlight, and a nice place to explore on a day when summer was still lingering, making it warm and bright even down in the chasm.
I spent the evening after that exploring Buxton, which in the high parts of the High Street resembles most British small towns, but then you drop down from there and discover yourself in a Victorian spa town, complete with giant pavilion, landscaped gardens and opera house. It’s a nice little town, well worth a visit, as is the Pavilion Gardens Parkrun which I ran on the Saturday morning for three twisting laps of the Gardens. It was the first Parkrun I’ve been to where one of the marshals’ tasks was to keep geese off the course and where the pre-race briefing included instructions on how I could follow in the footsteps of the Victorians and “take the waters” from St Ann’s Well not far from the course.
I did fill my bottle there and whether it was from their recuperative powers or the training I’ve been doing, I was ready for a walk in the afternoon. Well, after a stop at the High Peak Bookstore for lunch and a spot of browsing. Cheap books, a great cafe and close to some great walks? I’m wondering if this place was created as a trap for me, but if it was I escaped it repeatedly over the weekend.
Down the road from the bookstore is the village of Earl Sterndale, and I parked up there and headed out towards Parkhouse Hill and Chrome Hill, taking in some of the route known locally as the Dragon’s Back, because both rise sharply up in line to thin ridges.
It was a grey day, one where it wasn’t actively raining but low clouds were making it damp and feeling like it was always just about to begin chucking it down. Not the best day for picking my way up and down some rocky ridges, but while the climbs and descents here are steep and sharp, they’re also relatively short, so I was soon at the top of Parkhouse Hill looking towards Chrome. (And there’s a browser-based joke here considering how many Edges there are in the Peak District but, as yet, no Firefox Hill)
There were quite a few people arriving at the summit of Parkhouse at the same time as me, and as it’s quite small and hadn’t taken that long to get to, I soon began the descent rather than continue as part of the crowding. It’s a rocky descent, with quite severe drop-offs on either side, so one where I decided to put security over dignity and made use of a technique involving five points of contact, also known as not being afraid to sit and lower myself down carefully on the steeper and slippier bits.
But I was soon down and then across the road to Chrome, which had a similarly steep ascent, but this time a little further, and the lay of the land meaning I came to a couple of false summits before the real top came into view. I paused there for a little while, chatting with some others and pondered whether to continue own the other side and loop back the long way, but that was when the cloud finally committed to becoming proper rain and the direct route back won out.
Back the way I came up Chrome Hill, with my knees protesting at performing their second steep descent in an hour, and then around the bottom of Parkhouse Hill and back over a little ridge into Earl Sterndale. A nice walk, even on a damp day, and one that only took a couple of hours, giving my enough time to get back to the bookstore before it closed for more tea and cake. And the thought that maybe they let me out of the trap because I’d spent enough to pay my own ransom.
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post and would like to see more from me, you can buy me a coffee to help me out. If you’re a Medium member or subscriber, please clap and share this post so more people see it. You can follow me on Bluesky or on Mastodon at zirk.us and on other social media by following the links here.
