Paul Lydon: Kinder Scout

Karen's brother Keith joined Karen and myself for a walk on Kinder Scout on a perfect day which was dry with quite a lot of sun but not too warm.

We started with breakfast at Outside at Calver Crossroads once it had opened for business at 09:30 as we had arrived early at 09:20.

After parking at the Edale car park at Grindsbrook Booth, we made our way along the start of the Pennine Way, then branched off along the path leading along Crowden Clough. We continued following Crowden Brook where most people leave it by following a steep path up towards the plateau's edge.

After scrambling along boulders near the water, we arrived at the easy, but unfortunately short, scramble at the top of the Clough.

We had a short rest sitting beside the path which follows the edge of the plateau before setting off along the bed of one of the Brook's tributaries heading north. Keeping an eye on the compass despite the clear whether to lake sure we didn't veer off our intended route across the moor to the waterfall of Kinder Downfall, we left the channel in the peaty bog we had been following, known as a “grough”, then crossed several other groughs and squelched our way over short stretches of peat, heading towards Crowden Head.

Soon we could see the landmark of the pair of large gritstone buttresses known as Kinder Gates which are on either bank of the Kinder River which heads for the western edge of the plateau in a corner where the plateau edge turns through 90 degrees from a north-south orientation to west-east.

Once we had reached the wide sandy bed of the Kinder River, we followed easy going along the river bed until we reached Kinder Downfall where the river tumbles over the edge into a large rocky amphitheatre.

The water is often blown upwards by the prevailing winds and today it was doing just that.

We sat on rocks overlooking the Downfall and the Kinder Reservoir with views across Cheshire and towards Manchester in the distance, The huge dish belonging to the radio telescope at Jodrell Bank stood out clearly.

After a short snack, we continued onwards along the path following the edge of Kinder Scout southwards passing near the trig point at Kinder Low and soon arrived at the large rock formation of Edale Rocks.

From here we turned off the route which heads for the top if the Jacob's Ladder path to arrive at the path on the path on the eastern edge of the plateau. This we followed passing the rocky tors of Noe Stool and Pym Chair and onwards as it wended through the weirdly-shaped gritstone boulders which have been sculpted by ages of wind and weather, known as the Wool Packs.

We passed the top of Crowden Clough, where we had scrambled up to the plateau's edge earlier in the walk and the followed the path along the edge as it headed towards the top of Grindsbrook Clough but we chose to follow a path leading off along the top of Grindsbrook Clough to arrive at the summit of Grindslow Knoll.

Leaving the windy top if the Knoll we made our way down the steep rock path eventually arriving back at pastureland by Grindsbrook Booth village, then following the path alongside the small stream running beside the large Coopers Farm Camp Site, we were back at the village beside the Old Nags Head Inn pub.

We had a mug of tea and slices of cake in the camp site café, then walked back along the road to our starting point at the car park.