We decided on a short walk starting in Hope, where we could leave the car fairly safely overnight, up Lose Hill then along part of the Great Ridge between the Hope and Edale valleys, then doen from Hollins Cross to Grindsbrook Booth where we had a choice of campsites to spend the night.
As it happened, we chose the warmest weather of the year so far so it was quite a warm day for walking as we left Winster to stop off on the way at Bakewell. We needed a couple of things such as a gas cartridge so we popped into Cotswold Outdoors to pick them up and also some sandwiches for lunch.
I wanted to see if I could get an inflatable pillow but there weren't any at Cotswold Outdoors so we stopped of at the Outside shop at Calver crossroads, again on the way to Hope. Much to our surprise, we found that although the café was continuing to trade under new management, the Outside shop had closed down last month – although signs on the doors said it had “relocated” to their other three shops in Hathersage.
So, we made a slight detour to Hathersage to stop at what was the main branch of Outside instead. No luck with inflatable pillows but I managed to buy a very light pair of flip-flops made by Teva which would be very welcome in the hot weather around the campsite later.
As we were in no great rush to start the walk as it was relatively short on and we would have the remaining part of the day to spend at the campsite, while we were there, we had a quick refreshment stop in the café upstairs and then headed off to Hope.
We parked up in a side road, got our walking boots on, grabbed our rucksacks and set off on the route to the summit of Lose Hill. We passed several groups of youths on their way with trademark large rucksacks with tents, bags and other items strapped on, who were participants in the Duke of Edinburgh's Award Scheme (or DOE).
On the way up Lose Hill in the hot sun we paused for a while in the cool shade of s a couple of large trees just past a lovely farmhouse and ate our sandwiches before continuing onwards the towards the summit. It seemed not as busy as we expected despite the relatively early time of 14:00 – maybe because of the warm temperatures?
After passing the topograph on the summit where there were some walkers resting in the sun and we had a short break sitting on a tiny outcrop of rock in order to cool down a bit.
We made our way afterwards along the path following the top of the Great Ridge passing Back Tor and after reaching the ancient path leading from the Edale valley to Castleton which was used in the long past to carry coffins from the churchless Edale valley across to Castleton's church, we followed the route along the path down to eventually arrive at the small village of Grindsbrook Booth.
We stopped off at the campsite by the National Park information centre, called “Filedhead” but found it was fully booked with a “no spaces” sign hanging up at the entrance. So we followed the road towards the village centre and found room at the large campsite opposite the Old Nags Head pub, called Coppers Farm.
We arranged and paid for an overnight stay at £11 which is quite reasonable and found a space to pitch the tent.
Soon we had the tent up and we sat nearby in a shady spot by a field wall and after a while got the gas stove out and boiled up some water to pour into our dehydrated meals. The result was edible but not fantastically tasty – at least they were quick and easy and there was no washing up except for a couple of spoons!
Afterwards we sat around in our patch of shade on the busy campsite until the sun dropped behind a ridge and temperatures cooled down. Eventually we got into our sleeping bags in the tent and went to sleep.
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