Sunday October 1st

Hayfield, William Clough and Mill Hill

Despite a somewhat dodgy forecast, we decided to try a slight variant on our usual walks from Hayfield to Kinder Downfall and Kinder Low- inspired by one of our new Dark Peak walking guides. We parked up at the Bowden Bridge "Trespass" car park and made our way up to the Kinder Reservoir dam, where a few sheep were grazing on its slopes.
Sheep grazing on Kinder Reservoir dam

As might be seen from the photo above, the cloud was down over Kinder. For a change, we stayed on the path that runs beside the reservoir- this has much more pastoral views than our usual path, White Brow, which runs further up. We joined that path at the foot of William Clough and started our way up towards Kinder. As we climbed, the drizzle turned into more persistent rain and it became much more windy. When we reached the col between Kinder and Mill Hill, we decided that walking along the western edge of the Kinder Plateau would be pretty unpleasant in the wind and rain. Rather than just going back down William Clough, we decided to more or less reverse the major part of our (very pleasant!) walk of September 8th over Mill and Burnt Hills. By this time we were regretting not wearing our overtrousers and we were getting very wet. When we reached the road just above now closed Grouse Inn, we took the bridleway south below The Knott and over Middle Moor and past the shooting cabin.

On the way up past The Knott, Burnt Hill in the mist behind

When we reached the shooting cabin we checked the map and saw that the way back down to the reservoir dam and then down to the car park was much shorter than going down the Snake Path to the main part of Hayfield. On the way down we were passed by a couple of cheery lads who had spent the very damp night camping on Kinder's summit. Rather them than us!

A rather soggy four hours, 8 miles and 530m ascent.


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