We parked at
Fairholmes car park after carefully driving past the crowd of mallard
ducks and I bought a sandwich for lunch at the kiosk in the car park.
The 222 bus stopped just outside the car park and we had 10 minutes
before the 1015 bus was due.
We got off at the bus
turning point at Kings Tree and set off along the cycle track/path
through some trees and soon arrived at the old pack-horse bridge at
Slippery Stones.
From here we continued
along the bridleway until we reached a junction with a footpath
continuing ahead northwards with the bridleway veering off eastwards.
Now I had read a
description somewhere on the web about it being possible to leave the
footpath (which was actually a land rover track) and follow a
zigzagging path to reach a path higher up near a trig point at Outer
Edge which then led towards Howden Edge. There was an obvious very
sharp bend in the track after the point we should leave it and we
hadn't reached that yet. We couldn't see very much on our right due
to the lay of the land and as we hadn't seen any zigzagging paths, we
decided to climb the steeper ground through deep heather.
We reached a large
flat area of moor with a large craggy are of ground ahead. Looking at
the map and confirming our position with my Garmin Etrex GPS, I
realised this was Horse Stone Naze and we were on a section of land
called The Lands. This was not where we wanted to be!
So we headed Little
Stainery Clough and returned down a very steep section of heather
covered bank to regain the land rover track. Realising where we went
wrong, we returned back along the land rover track and then followed
a rising Permissive footpath to reach Broadhead Clough where we
stopped next to the steam and ate lunch.
Looking more closely
at the map, I realised that we had assumed we had been on the green
dotted line of the public right of way, but we were on a track which
was shown on the map separately a short distance away, and the track
didn't follow a sharp bend unlike the marked public right of way.
This had been my mistake and why we went wrong. Oh well, there's
always next time.
As we had wasted a lot
of time and we were unsure how long it would take to now follow the
correct route in the area of Broadhead Clough to reach Howden Edge
and then follow it and drop back down near Howden dam, we decided to
take the easy option and retrace part of our route back to Slippery
Stones and then along the cycle route/bridleway following the sides
of Howden and Derwent reservoirs back to Fairholmes car park. On the
way we met Pete M out with someone on a cycle ride and then Ron
and Patsy who were out for a short walk after spending the
morning at Edale MTR's base in Hope attending a Casualty Care course.
It had been warmer
than recently at around 6 degrees Celsius and I spent the day wearing
a Montane Sabretooth softshell jacket which was warm and comfortable
enough but when we stopped for a short rest near the end of the walk,
I put on a Paramo Velez Smock (which I had been carrying in my
rucksack in case of showers, which luckily never materialised) for
extra warmth as it was cooling down as it was cooling down rapidly as
the sun was setting as it was past 1530.
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| Old Packhorse Bridge |
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| Howden Dam |
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| Derwent Dam |
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