Pennine Way: Day 1 - Edale to Crowden

Saturday 8th March

Distance: 27.5km; Ascent:810m; with Lynsey

See approximate route in new window

After completing the Gritstone Trail back in January, we had set our sights on the southernmost sections of the Pennine Way for the next training walk for our first TGO Challenge, which we will be starting two months tomorrow.

Therefore we took a morning train to Edale from Manchester and set off across the fields to Upper Booth before beginning the ascent up the valley and then on up Jacob's Ladder.  Soon we were exposed to the full force of the strong westerly wind as we ascended up to the trig point on Kinder Low.

The wind remained strong as we followed the western edge of Kinder northwards and it remained windy and grey, but mostly dry, all day.  At Kinder Downfall, the wind was so strong that very little of the water appeared to actually be going down the waterfall; instead it was being whipped up by the wind into a fine spray that coated everything nearby, including the path!

We were now walking into the wind for the next couple of kilometres, which was quite unpleasant!  At Mill Hill we made an abrupt turn to the NE onto a mainly slabbed path to the Snake Pass, where we crossed the A57 and ascended up to reach the summit of Bleaklow Head (Nuttall, HuMP).  Given the weather was so bad, I didn't actually take any photos today so here is a photo of Bleaklow Head from a more recent walk in 2011:

Bleaklow Head cairn (photo taken on a day walk in 2011)

We descended NW to reach Torside Reservoir before following a path through the trees to reach the old road to Crowden.  The OS maps still show the old location of the youth hostel, so we had to seek out the new building, which was a few hundred metres away.  We had booked ourselves a 2-bed room, which came with breakfast (there was no option just to pay for the beds only!)  Also the new hostel doesn't have a self-catering kitchen, which seems a bit odd for a youth hostel!  Luckily we discovered this before we left home, so I had brought our camping stove with us and we cooked our pasta dinner on the patio outside the hostel.

Written up in March 2012 from memories