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Sheffield & South YorkshireWalk Details:
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The Walk:It was Jim’s birthday, and for some reason best known to himself he wanted to go and climb boggy hills in miserable weather. I had tried to dissuade him, offering him instead the chance of warm pubs and plenty of beer, but he was having none of it. He was absolutely determined to get cold, wet and knackered, insisting that he was “not a quitter”! The closest car parking to the Sheffield and South Yorkshire tops is on a road that is not open at weekends. We therefore decided to take advantage of being in the Peak District on a Monday by bagging those tops. The drive up to where we’d park for the tops was pretty stunning, running alongside Ladybower, Derwent and Howden Reservoirs, and passing the enormous dams that had created them. Despite the beauty, it still felt a long way – it was eight miles along a narrow twisting road before we were able to get out and get walking. As we left the car, and plunged into the woods at the northern end of Howden Reservoir the skies above were depressingly tenebrous – it was clearly going to rain at some point. It wasn’t going to stop us though! The county tops were on the opposite side of the reservoir, and the only way to reach them was to walk around its northern end.
It was much tougher going on the far side of the lake. According to the OS map a track ran along the edge of the reservoir – there seemed to be one for a while before it ran between trees and petered out. As the ground grew rougher and more overgrown, we increasingly had to scramble our way around or over obstacles. In the end, an inlet of the lake forced us upward away from the shore and we had to go through a fence into the field above. This field was shown on the map as open access land owned by the National Trust, so we could freely enter. Halfway up the field we found a well-worn path heading in the right direction, and wondered if the lakeside path marked on our map had been diverted into the open access land. At any rate, the path was so much easier to follow than the lakeside that we decided to stick to it – not least because it headed under some trees and the grey skies were just starting to treat us to some drizzle. The path eventually led us to a side valley called Howden Dean where the Abbey Brook flowed into Howden Reservoir. Here a path lead steeply off up towards our first top of the day. It wasn’t marked as a public footpath, but as it led over the newly created open access land we were free to use it – hurrah for the Countryside Rights of Way Act! It was a stiff climb up to the small sub-top of Nether Hey – a barren, boggy hill deserted apart from – amazingly – a lone arctic hare! We’d never seen one before, but we knew that they’d been recently re-introduced to the Peak District, and were well chuffed to see one. It lolloped along ahead of us, seemingly completely unfazed by our presence and looking for all the world like Alice’s white rabbit leading us into Wonderland. Our onward route didn’t look like any sort of Wonderland though – the top of Howden Moor was obscured by shifting ghostly hill fog. The path petered out as it descended onto the broad shoulder of land linking Nether Hey to Howden Moor, and seeing no onward path at all, we decided the best approach would be the direct one. Taking a direction reading to the top from our GPS, we tackled the steep escarpment of Howden Moor head on. It was an exceptionally steep climb, picking our way between boulders and taking a rest and Kendal Mint Cake half way up. Reaching the top it was suddenly the weather meeting us head on – what must have been near gale force winds almost knocked us to the ground, whilst driving rain seemingly straight through our waterproofs and into places that you really don’t want to get wet. Visibility was down to only a couple of dozen yards. Bagging this top was not going to be easy. The funny thing was, the wind was coming up the hill we had just climbed, yet whilst climbing we had not felt a breath of it. At least blowing in this direction the wind would hold us on the edge, rather than blowing us off of it! For Howden Edge (the imaginatively titled edge of Howden Moor) was truly an edge. In one direction the moor stretched away into the distance; flat, boggy and frankly unappealing. In the other direction the landscape fell off sharply towards Howden Reservoir, down the slope we’d just ascended. The GPS took us a couple of hundred yards to our left on a path along the Edge, to reach a cairn at High Stones, which according to the OS map is the highest point of both the Unitary Authority of Sheffield and the former county of South Yorkshire. Strange rocky outcrops jut out sideways from the Edge here, looming through the murk and swirling drizzle like malign spirits. After a quick photo we hurried gladly onwards.
The path along Howden Edge was pretty flat, but my no means easy going. For a start it varied between being boggy and being waterlogged – frequent detours from the path were required that involved jumping between tussocks on the equally boggy moor. Secondly the conditions were atrocious; the cold wind and stinging rain battered us remorselessly, sapping both strength and willpower and making it impossible to see through my glasses. The noise of the wind meant that we had to shout to be heard, and progress was slow – at one point a particularly strong gust blew my descending foot sideways a couple of a foot into a boggy hole. Jim found this particularly amusing, although not nearly as amusing as I found an incident a few minutes later when he tripped and did a somewhat spectacular bellyflop into another puddle. Fortunately there were a couple more craggy rock formations on the Edge, and if you crouched low enough behind them you could get a few minutes respite from the malevolent wind. For a while the drizzle and fog cleared enough for us to get reasonable views down to the reservoirs through the swirling mists below – revealing that on a nicer day this could be rather a stunning place to stand. Eventually we arrived at Margery Hill, the peak being a little way “inland” from the edge – we struck out diagonally across the moor to reach it. We found the trig point standing, white and gleaming, in the middle of a small and thankfully easily wade-able lake at the hill top (how does all this water stay at the top of hills anyway? Why doesn’t it run downhill as it should?). This took us up to our seventieth top overall, and our twentieth of the trip. It should have been a moment to savour, but whilst we were taking photos again the mist and rain closed in worse than ever, reducing visibility down to just ten or twenty metres. This was about to cause us untold grief… We decided to go down the opposite side of Margery Hill to that which we had ascended and once again take a diagonal back to the edge, thus returning to the path a few hundred metres further on from where we had left it. There seemed to be a clear path leading off the hill, which we followed until it petered out amongst burnt heather. We continued to head diagonally downhill in the same direction, confident that we would quickly get back to Howden Edge, but soon found our way blocked by a series of streams that had cut impressive channels into the peat surface, some up to ten feet deep. Impressive they may have been, but they were a nightmare to get across – it usually required a considerable diversion to find a place where it was feasible to descend and re-ascend the steep and very slippery banks – plus, of course, we got covered in black peat whilst doing this.
It was whilst sitting in this brief shelter eating beef jerky (a great trail food!) that the drizzle slowed and the murk started to lift, reflecting the lightening of our spirits now we felt we were back on track. As visibility rapidly improved, we peeked round the rocks and saw – to our amazement – a trig point. We’d managed to get back to Margery Hill, which we’d last seen some forty minutes before. With the lifting cloud (not to mention the GPS!) there was no danger of getting lost this time – we could now clearly see the path along Howden Edge just a couple of hundred yards away. We now felt absolutely elated, and fairly galloped our way along the Edge, past an old iron-age cairn, singing as we went. We soon came to a crossing bridleway that would finally lead us off the moors – this was obviously the “tourist route” up, laid with stone flags in places. Strangely enough the white rabbit (possibly a different one) reappeared to lead the way – we could have really done with its guidance half an hour before! As we came down the wonderfully named Cranberry Clough and returned to the Slippery Stones, the sun came out and the valley was bathed in a golden post-storm glow. It looked truly beautiful and we felt elated – we’d come through what had probably been our toughest walk to date and survived! In truth, on a clear calm day (especially after a long dry spell) these tops would probably be fairly easy (particularly if you ascended via Cranberry Clough rather than Howden Dean and Nether Hey) and give spectacular views down the Derwent Valley. In today’s conditions it was always going to be tough, yet we’d managed to make it even harder through our stupidity. We’d had some important lessons drummed into us (admittedly ones we already knew, but the reminder did us good!): 1) The GPS was (in the end) a lifesaver. In future we’ll remember
to use it sooner, and record the position of the car when we leave and
strategic waymarks as we walk. We’ve got a fair few of these Peak District boggy moors to bag, and frankly we’ll make the rest a lot easier on ourselves! On a final note, in bagging 20 tops this weekend we’d managed to
use 14 different motorways, which must be some sort of record in itself! |
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It wasn’t long until we reached the head
of the reservoir, where we followed the River Derwent northwards for a
short distance. Here we came to a place on the map called Slippery Stones,
where a footpath was marked as crossing the river. The track we’d
followed so far dipped down and forded the river – Slippery Stones?
They looked absolutely lethal. Just in the nick of time we saw that there
was a bridge a little further upstream. We crossed it and headed back
down the other side of the river and reservoir, on the aptly named “Cold
Side”.
Some websites dispute that High Stones is the
highest point on the edge, preferring instead Margery Hill, which is situated
a mile or so further north on the gently curving Howden Edge. Despite
the fact that the OS maps show clearly that Margery Hill is actually four
metres lower than the High Stones, we’d decided to visit it anyway
– partly because it was pretty much on our way back anyway; partly
because it had a trig point and trigaholic Jim would want to bag at least
one trig on his birthday; but mainly because of the all important “just
in case” factor.
I think it must have been the cold and wet
addling our brains that meant we spent a good twenty minutes on this moorland
assault course before we realised that we were lost. It took us another
ten minutes of mindless and increasingly worried wandering before we worked
out what we’d done – in the murk we’d come off of completely
the wrong side of Margery Hill, and started the long slow descent towards
the far side of the moor. Realising we needed to get back on track and
quickly, we started to head uphill again, feeling increasingly cold and
wet and panicky. I can only assume that it was once again our cold addled
brains that meant it took us so long to remember our faithful GPS, the
one thing that could help us. Straight away we knew where we were on the
map, now we just needed to work out which way to go (no easy thing in
such poor visibility on this featureless moor. Unfortunately the electronic
compass had uncalibrated itself, and was pointing us downhill. Jim lead
us confidently off in that direction, but I spotted that the east readings
on the grid references were changing in the wrong direction and called
him back. We started to navigate purely by the changing east and north
readings, when I moaned that I should have saved the position of the car
in the GPS before we left. Jim immediately came up with the obvious response
(once again addled brains had somehow stopped us thinking of this before)
we could program in the grid reference of the car from our OS map! Finally
we were back on track, and heading uphill soon came to a rocky outcrop
where we could finally get some much-needed respite from the wind and
rain.