Kinder Surprise.

From the deep and distant past I seem to remember being here before. All I recall is a strange landscape that I wasn’t expecting at the top of a steep climb, not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this.

Wednesday 25th July 2012.

The new Sat Nav app on the phone got us straight to Edale in Derbyshire without a single wrong turning, which is good for me as I have a habit of….let’s call it…’a momentary loss of direction’, it’s not lost, just a temporary state of not being where you should be. More of that later.

Adrian was already in the car park when Matt and I arrived and after a quick drive around Edale (it was quick) we decided to use the first car park we met in as there seemed to be a distinct lack of car parking anywhere else! Everyone had remembered to bring boots this time. So we set off through Edale and past the Old Nag’s Head pub which is considered to be the start of the Pennine Way and on our way to Grindsbrook. Weather wise, we were in the middle of summer…..an English summer, so anything from a full blown blizzard to glorious sunshine could be expected. The forecast said 18 degrees max with potential light showers in the afternoon, so we packed suntan lotion and waterproofs.

The ascent was quite varied with fairly level paths leading to steep scrambles over rocks and boulders nearer the top, we followed the Grinds Brook until we arrived at the top. It took a while, with a few…can…I….get….my….breath……back stops we made it, that should be the hardest climb out of the way and it was.

Looking back over Grinds brook.

Getting nearer the top of Grinds brook.

Weather watch so far, sunny with cloudy bits. The higher we got the clouds looked more threatening, or was that just closer! After a brief rest, we set off in the direction of Crowden Tower which was along the edge of Kinder Scout so we were greeted with excellent views over the High Peak district. As we arrived at Crowden Tower, Adrian asked Matt to show him how to walk on a compass bearing. ‘Why do you want to know that now?’ asked Matt. ‘In case the cloud comes down and we can’t see anything’ replied Adrian. Reasonable request we thought, so Matt showed him and then we carried on walking over the plateau of Kinder Scout towards Kinder Downfall. Now either Adrian had inside information, or he has ‘magical powers’, but the cloud came down rapidly until we could only see about 15-20 yards in front of us.

Now, those of you that have had the pleasure of being on the top of Kinder Scout will know that it is a large plateau covered with peat. When the rain comes down areas of the peat become boggy, almost liquid in places, so walking across in low visibility (on a compass bearing) was always going to be fun. And it was. There were several areas where access was blocked by deep looking boggy areas, so we would go around and try to stay on the compass bearing, but being mature adults we spent most of the time curled up laughing as each other sank into different depths of the bog. Adrian surpassed our feeble efforts by managing to get stuck up to his knees as he jumped across an innocent looking section of peat. So, with the many diversions, distractions and dunkings it took a while to get back on ‘solid’ land. We picked up the river leading to Kinder Downfall.

It was the peat on Kinder that I remembered from years ago and how it just looked surreal against some of the rock outcrops. I’m sure it’s amazing when covered in snow.

Sheep lie in wait for their next victim with Kinder Reservoir in the background.

We arrived at Kinder Downfall at around 12.30, so we decided to stop for something to eat and dry our boots, feet, knees !! The cloud cover had now lifted and it was a glorious site looking over Kinder reservoir and the surrounding countryside. During our break, I noticed that there was another side to the peat, it stinks. I couldn’t make out where the smell was coming from, or who, but I kept getting wiffs of it. Could have been the stuff caked around my boots or the lovely black stuff dripping from Adrian’s legs, maybe even the large smelly looking sheep who were beginning to assemble (do they hunt in packs?).

Moving on, we headed on the Pennine Way towards Jacob’s Ladder, stopping off at the Trig point at 633metres. Now, as I mentioned earlier about having ‘a momentary loss of direction’, all was going well so far, until we left the Trig point. We followed the path and for some reason we ended up in a place that we hadn’t intended to be in. Some people might call that lost, but they’d be wrong. Following us down what seemed the steepest staircase in the world was the Kinder Mountain rescue boys. When I say boys I really mean elder statesmen. Not wanting to sound as though we were temporarily in the wrong location, certain subtle questions were asked, like ‘where are you going?’ and ‘where’s Edale?’ After a bit of bluffing that we knew what we doing we headed off in the direction of Edale. A slight miscalculation had added another 5km onto the journey, not the end of the world, but probably the beginning of some blisters (I’ll leave that for another blog).

After a while we picked up the Pennine Way again and arrived at Jacob’s Ladder. This had a significance to me as it is the title of a Rush track (my fave band) on the album Permanent Waves and I had the tune in my head from there until Edale. Jacob’s ladder was a bit of a slog and I was glad that I was going down, as opposed to the poor souls struggling their way up.

Following the Pennine Way we made our way to Upper Booth and then onwards towards Edale. The weather had been excellent, with Matt and myself suffering a bit of sunburn and Adrian using peat to prevent his legs from burning. It was a very varied walk with many different terrains to tackle and one I’d like to do again, maybe in winter.

Chris.