Walk Completed on 5th May, 2016. Total Distance: 16.5 miles.

The sun was out, and after my recent enjoyable circuit around Edale, I decided to head back to the Peak District and bag a couple of popular summits that I’ve somehow not managed to do yet. Crowden was the starting point and the plan was to ascend Bleaklow via one of the few decent Peak District scrambles up Wildboar Clough, before circling back and following the Pennine Way to Black Hill.

The walk started at the National Trust car park, not too far away from Wildboar Clough, and just off the B6105. A short Path from here led to the Trans Pennine Trail, which I followed for a short distance before coming to the signpost pointing to Wildboar Clough. I naturally headed the way that it indicated, and carried on following the path until I was alongside the lower section of the clough. I wasn’t sure at which point the path was going to take me down into the clough proper, so I decided to scramble down the steep bank early for a more interesting walk. At this point, the floor of the clough was a dry, rocky stream bed and the exciting section that I was eagerly waiting for didn’t appear until a bit later, when I’d managed to ascend about two thirds of the height.

The waterfalls looked wonderful and – if memory serves me correctly – there were three of them to navigate. The climbing of them was relatively simple, although I didn’t necessarily choose the hardest route. If the third waterfall had been dry, I’d have most likely attempted to climb up the right hand corner. As it was though, I didn’t particularly fancy getting drenched this early into a 16 mile trek and so I ascended via an easier and drier chimney on the left hand side. Once this third waterfall was ascended, the route became fairly easy going and was a simple case of following the line until it eventually met up with the Pennine Way route.

The top of Bleaklow is, as its name suggests, bleak. A barren and wild landscape with random scatterings of rocks and plenty of peat hags. The dark peak area is always best tackled in dry weather – unless you’re one of those hardcore walkers that love walking in bog. The summit of Bleaklow (Bleaklow Head) isn’t the most impressive sight in the world. Just a pile of rocks on the peat. I headed in a westerly direction and circled back round until I was back on the Pennine Way which I followed back towards Crowden. Once you get to Clough Edge, alongside Torside Clough, the views become much more impressive with the reservoir visible in the distance. The path also becomes much more defined and easier to walk on around this point. It’s a fairly gentle and pleasant descent that eventually leads back down to the B6105 and the Torside Dam.

Torside Dam runs between Torside Reservoir and Rhodeswood Reservoir. Altogether in Longdendale Valley (the valley that runs between Bleaklow and Black Hill, and that Crowden is a part of) there are a chain of six reservoirs and are collectively known as the Longdendale Chain. The reservoirs were completed in 1877 by civil engineer John Frederick Bateman, known as the greatest dam-builder of his generation, and at the time, were the largest artificial expanses of water in the world. Local geography/history lesson over! The Pennine Way took me over the dam where I stopped to take a few photos before continuing across the A628 and on route to Black Hill.

The weather was much warmer than I was expecting, and the sun had barely been covered by cloud since I began. My girlfriend advised me to take some sunblock with me, and I dismissed the advice, thinking that it wasn’t going to be anywhere near that hot. I was regretting that now with the back of my neck feeling like a hotplate and 2 of my 4 small bottles of water already drunk. At this point, I still had the whole of the Black Hill route to do in the heat, and only 660ml of water left. Silly me.

The path to Black Hill, ie the Pennine Way, is a fairly straight-forward affair with little in the way of difficulties barring an occasional stream crossing. Whether this is still the case in bad weather, I don’t know. The views are excellent, with Crowden Great Brook down to the right, and Black Tor and Rakes Rocks up to the left. Across the other side of the brook is the great lump of Bareholme Moss, easily identified by its horizontal line of rocks three quarters of the way up. Just past Rakes Rocks, the path suddenly ascends steeply for a short distance (it’s really the only strenuous part of the walk to the summit), crosses Oaken Clough, and ends up on the top of the distinctive Laddow Rocks. The path continues until the dramatic contours around Crowden Great Brook are out of sight, and all that lays ahead is barren moorland. Eventually the path becomes paved with large stone paving slabs which lead all the way to Black Hill summit. Like Bleaklow, Black Hill doesn’t actually feel like a hill once you get to the trig point. It feels like a stump in the middle of a moor which, in effect, it is. Looking around, there’s not a lot in the way of great views, or at least not what you’d normally expect from the summit of a hill.

So… at last I was at the summit of Black Hill. It felt like it took an eternity to get there as I staggered across the bleak moorland with mild sunstroke, my water all gone now. I had plotted my route in advance, and looking in the direction of my return path, the first thing I noticed was… there’s no path. Feeling safe due to the fact I was using the ViewRanger GPS app on my phone, I headed in the direction that I was supposed to be going. This was a lot more difficult as there’s a lot more in the way of wetland and bog to navigate once you leave the comfort of the paving slabs, even in this fine weather. A faint path occasionally appeared for a short while only to disappear again within minutes, but it was enough to give me confidence I was heading the right way. I was really struggling with the heat and my legs didn’t feel like they had much strength at all left in them. So I walked, and walked across terrain that pretty much didn’t change, daydreaming about the variety of drinks I was going to buy myself on the way home. Eventually, in my daze, I almost walked straight off the edge of one of the small cliffs at Loft End Quarry! The sudden appearance of the quarry took me by surprise, and also gave me a vital shot of motivation as I knew I was nearly at the end. There’s an old track that used to be used by the quarrymen, which took me down from here and eventually to the A628. From the road, it was a simple case of crossing to the other side of the reservoir and heading back to the car park.

Needless to say, I stopped at the first shop on the way home, and guzzled copious amounts of liquid!

Glossary
Brook: NOUN, A small stream
Clough: NOUN, Northern English, A steep valley or ravine.
Hag: NOUN, Scottish & Northern English, (also peat hag) An overhang of peat.

Further Reading and Useful Links
John Frederick Bateman – Wikipedia Page
Longdendale Chain – Wikipedia Page
Bleaklow – Wikipedia Page
Bleaklow page at peakdistrictinformation.com
Black Hill – Wikipedia Page
Black Hill page at peakdistrictinformation.com
My Google photo album for the walk
Download the GPX file