Kinder Round

Karen joined me on a walk around the perimeter of the Kinder Scout plateau.

We planned on breakfast at the café at Outside in Hathersage and arrived in the car park at 09:25 and found that Outside doesn't open until 09:30. No problem we thought, we'll wait for 5 minutes.

The doors were open at 09:30 and after queuing at the security gate at the foot of the stairs leading up to the café, we found out that the café wouldn't be serving hot food for a while due to some staff not arriving! Rats!

So, we decided to try Grindleford Cafe and had a humungous breakfast including a pint of tea for £5.70.

All this delay meant a latish start, unfortunately, considering we had a longish walk planned.

We parked in the main Edale car park at Grindsbrook Booth with the weather dry and quite warm but luckily dry despite a forecast of an early showery start with clagged-in tops. It was fairly windy though. As we set off at around 10:50.

We set of from the village following the path rising towards Ringing Roger and then skirted along the western side of the rocky ridge until we arrived on the path following the edge of the plateau.

Heading in an easterly direction we followed the path with views across to Mam Tor and the rest of the Great Ridge along with Lose Hill and Win Hill. We noticed several largish hairy catterpillars crawling across the path as we went. When we arrived at Crookstone Knoll and stopped there just below the edge in the shelter of rocks to have a drink and look at the views across to Derwent Edge, Alport Castles and the Snake Pass far below.

From here the path continued eastwards along Blackden Edge and then Seal Edge passing the Seal Stones until we arrived at the top of Fair Brook where it flows off the plateau. Near this area we saw and heard a group involved with The Great Kinder Beer Barrel Challenge – a fell-running event involving carrying a 72 pint beer barrel full of water across parts of Kinder Scout starting at the Snake Inn on one side and finishing at the Old Nags Head Inn in Grindsbrook Booth.

We turned north to stop at Fairbrook Naze to have lunch.

Next we followed the path along The Edge towards the route of the Pennine Way which drops off the plateau to cross the Snake Path on its way towards the Longdendale Valley.

Our route now turned to the south-east soon arriving at Kinder Downfall where we got a bit wet from the water falling to the ground after it had been blown back up in the air by the wind after it fell over the edge at the Downfall.

Now we headed southwards and sheltered in a rock-surrounded hollow for another rest and a drink.

Continuing along the edge path, we passed the top of Red Brook, the trig point on Kinder Low and then followed the descending path towards the large collection of rocks at Edale Rocks. From here the route dropped down a section of slabbed path heading towards the top of Jacobs Ladder but we turned north-east towards the prominent rocky tor of Noe Stool then onwards through the large weathered gritstone boulders known as The Woolpacks.

The next landmark was the top of Crowden Clough and the path skirted around the top before continuing towards the next valley of Grindsbrook Clough.

We followed another slabbed section of path until nearly at the top of Grindsbrook Clough, we followed a path skirting the south side of the Clough to lead towards Grindslow Knoll.

The last section of the route was tiring on our knees as we dropped down to the village of Grindsbrook Booth as it was beginning to get dark and then walked back down the road to the car park where there was a barbecue and live musinc in the Village Hall in celebration of the Beer Barrel race.

It had been a fairly long walk of about 15 miles with luckily good weather.