White Peak Walks: The Southern Dales. Mark Richards
if nothing else will give you added cause to stop and soak in your surroundings all the more appreciatively. One cannot over-emphasise the value of wearing comfortable boots and woolly socks. They are your point of hard contact and the basis of your walk – happiness turning to misery on a sixpence if you get it wrong.
Even with this guide in your pocket, make a point of obtaining the relevant Ordnance Survey or Harvey map to get the bigger picture and deduce finer detail. Another piece of kit you should automatically pop into your daypack is a compass to confirm your direction of travel. Make a point of practising orientating it with the grid lines on the map to fix positions. Such things as a torch and a small first aid pack will come to your rescue should you stumble, and sun cream is important when the sun does shine, combined with a suitably wide-brimmed hat. As a bonus have a camera handy to record the visual pleasures and surprising incidents along the way (and send any you are proud of to www.markrichards.info to share with fellow walkers).
Local Services and Transport
The White Peak area is geared to the visitor and, in particular, the outdoor enthusiast, whether travelling by bike or boot. There is a good spread of tearooms and pubs, the competition ensuring the standard is universally high, and plenty of overnight accommodation. The author sampled two youth hostels (Hartington and Youlgrave) and two campsites (Birchover and Blackwell) and can heartily recommend the service provided.
In support of residents (and a bonus for the visitor) there remains a good network of bus services routed through the core villages and towns which can efficiently play into walk planning. This guide chooses to focus on circular walks, but if you leave the car behind and plan ahead, there is great scope for fascinating cross-country expeditions with the bus journeys themselves becoming a real part of the scenic pleasure. Consult the National Park website – www.peakdistrict.org – where you can also download the Peak District Bus Timetable (published in March and October) and Peak Connections guides.
Using This Guide
Even for those comparatively new to venturing into the green yonder, the walks in this guide should be logical to follow and introduce only relatively small bite-size chunks of countryside. The routes range between 3 and 10 miles long. Invariably there is scope to extend or, on occasion, shorten, but they are designed to be natural, fulfilling half-day excursions.
The 30 walks in this volume are, from tip to toe, a sweet and savoury selection. They are consistently well marked and signposted to the eternal credit of the Park Authority and particularly the Ranger Service, which forms a valuable source of information and advice for visitors and residents alike.
The guide’s vignette extracts from the Ordnance Survey maps are included to give readers a feel for the overall course of each walk, but they are no substitute for carrying and frequently referring to the relevant OS Explorer map – OL24 covers this volume.
Beacon at the corner of the Mermaid car park, set ablaze by the setting sun (Walk 2)
The aim of this guide is to help you structure your exploration of the White Peak. Once into the swing of White Peak wandering you will start to see your own logical pattern and adapt the walks to suit your own objectives and this is as it should be. There are also converted railway trackbed trails (for walkers, cyclists and horse-riders) and several specifically waymarked trans-Park trails which, with the help of public transport, may lead you to construct elongated routes of your own – linking A with B to see for yourself!
THE WALKS
WALK 1
Dove Head and Washgate
| Start/Finish | Flash |
| Distance | 8km (5 miles) |
| Time | 3¾ hrs |
| Terrain | Hilly, with rough paths and tracks and some damp, streaminundated sections |
| Refreshments | Flash Bar Shores Tearoom and adjacent Travellers Rest and the New Inn in Flash |
| Parking | (GR 025673) Close to New Inn and beside water troughs space for couple of cars in middle of Flash |
The civil parish of Quarnford is centred upon the community of Flash, the highest village in the Staffordshire Moorlands. The sign at the New Inn claims the status of highest village pub in the British Isles at 1518ft (463m). The walk strolls over Wolf Edge and steps off the high gritstone slope of Axe Edge to discover the secret wilds of the youthful Dove. As for Walk 13, the focus of this route is beautiful Washgate Bridge, from where it climbs back over Colshaw to inspect the first ‘fold’ of the stripling Manifold.
Walk west from the New Inn passing the decaying Wesleyan chapel, an imposing tall square hall of a building with first floor steps and an early Victorian reworking of a late 18th-century chapel. It proclaims ‘The Lord loveth the gates of Zion’. The promised land in our case lies over the hill, so let’s be gone. Pass up by the old smithy and bear right up the track. Keep left and a weather eye out for a nippy dog. (If you see it, don’t turn your back on it but walk backwards through the gate.)
Ignore an inviting lane leading on to a grand prospect towards Shutlingsloe, and instead heed the footpath sign directing right up the field. This path leads through wall-stiles back into the lane further on with the rocks of Wolf Edge on the horizon ahead. Negotiating muddy patches, clamber over a fence-stile in marshy ground and walk to where a short walled lane branches left.
You may choose to go through the gate and follow this to visit the outcrop of Wolf Edge. This is an excellent early excuse to stop and admire the great expansive landscape of the Staffordshire Moorlands. Their character is nowhere better displayed. (The location may have a folk connection with a breeding place of the wolf – a flashback to that nipping dog!)
Backtrack and follow the footpath heading on north. Waymark posts will keep you on course beyond a ruin. Spot a caravan and mast on top of Oliver Hill over in view to the right; at 513m (1683ft) this is the highest point in Staffordshire. The path descends through three stiles, leading along a strip of improved pasture to the left of Oxenstitch Farm to climb up onto the road at a fence-stile, which replaces the old stone stile above. Turn up right, branching left at the junction rising to Hilltop and then bear up left again passing through a cottage row with a red ‘Private’ notice to a final cottage.
Go through the succeeding gate and follow the gravel track, declining gently along the slopes of Axe Edge End. ‘Axe’ is an old term for ‘principal spring’ and directly below is Dove Head Farm, source of the Dove. After a galvanised gate cautiously cross the A53. (The Travellers Rest advert is a bit premature in the context of the walk.) Pass down and round to the left of Wallnook, through gates and hand-gates to enter a pasture. Go straight downhill with a wall to the right. After a stile the path becomes a shallow hollow way (sunken track) and after another you pass a concrete block pump house. The descending drove way becomes an irregularly walled passage, finally entering a very damp access to a wicket-gate onto a metalled lane, beside an upgraded drive to Mount Pleasant.
Wolf Edge
Walk up the roadway ahead, passing the tidy entrance to Sycamore Cottage, to a road junction. There go straight across into the rising green lane, which narrows and turns sharp right. Descending easily to the former schoolhouse go left onto the road by the letterbox. Turn right, passing the former Brand Top school, now an occasional community hall, with a remote telephone kiosk and, a few paces on, a poignant sheltered war memorial. Cross the cattle grid and pass just beyond the ruined farm with a caravan behind.
A red footpath sign directs half-right from the fencelined track. Aim downhill to the far corner of the pasture, where a broken-walled passage leads towards a barn and then bear half-left to a stile with distinctive tall posts. Cross the stile into the rough valley side below Howe Green. The path largely