Sunday October 15th

 The Southern Gritstone Edges

After a rather wet week, the weather forecast for Sunday was excellent, so we headed out early to Baslow. After a coffee at the pretty Café on the Green, we walked up the road and track, towards Wellington’s Monument. We have already seen its delights, so we struck out along Baslow Edge, towards Curbar. On a sunny Sunday, the place was crowded, with masses of dog walkers. As we approached Curbar Gap we came across the Curbar Highland Cattle. They're very used to humans and a lot of people were mingling with them but, in the past, there've been some nasty incidents with them so we passed by as quickly as we could.

Curbar Cows

We then walked onto Froggatt Edge which is always great; the views are brilliant and the sense of space is superb. We had a break and a snack above the edge.

A break above Froggatt Edge

Eventually, the walk comes down from Froggatt and across to the Grouse Inn (which we had visited on a previous walk back in April). It takes a little while to walk up to White Edge, but we have always liked the landscape in this section, with the approaching moorland and the distant hills. We got up to White Edge and quite soon, stopped for lunch on the rocks. Our lunch was accompanied by the bellows of several huge stags which were roaming around the moor below. It is an amazing sound and the stags seemed to have a healthy entourage with them.

A stag and his does at a distance (no sound!)

As per the forecast, the day was beautiful and the views extensive- we could see the familiar sights of Win and Lose Hills, Kinder (including Crookstone Knoll) and even Bleaklow.

Familiar hills in the distance

We then walked down to a road and across and climbed in to the woodland above the crags of Gardom’s Edge.

On the way down from White Edge. Perfect skies!

The going was easy and despite some uncertainty about the route at one point, it was a lovely section of the walk in the afternoon autumn sunshine. I’m not sure the views were as good as the book made out, but we came out at a familiar point and reversed a route which we have done many times on one of our Chatsworth walks. Coming down to the main road and across, we took the lower route under the crags of Chatsworth Edge and soon entered the Chatsworth Park.
Chatsworth Park, sheep and the hunting tower just visible on the skyline

The guide book was slightly difficult to follow at this point, but we followed our noses, past lots of sheep to reach the turnstile and the path back to the centre of Baslow.

We finished about 5 and felt very lucky to be out on such a nice, sunny day. It was a break from the unremitting bad news from Israel and Gaza, which has dominated the media and engulfed us all.

A walk of just over six hours, 12.4 miles with 440m ascent.


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