An Evening Wander Up Shining Tor

Sunday 11th November

A torch-lit walk up Shining Tor from Pym Chair

Distance: 6.5km; Ascent: 170m; Cloudy but dry; Solo

See tracked route in new window

After various plans for getting out for a day walk had gone awry, I decided to head out for couple of hours this evening instead.  And Shining Tor seemed like an obvious objective being only a few kilometres from the road along a reasonably ok path.  Therefore at 7:45pm I put my boots and rucksack on, turned on my head-torch and set off southwards along the path over Cats Tor.

There were no stars as the sky was cloudy but there was reasonable visibility most of the time on the ridge.  However there were occasional foggy patches, which were a bit of a pain due to the torch-light reflecting off all the tiny water droplets!

A little under an hour after leaving the car, I reached the summit of Shining Tor (Marilyn, Dewey).  Here I took a bit of a break by the trig point, admiring the view with my torch switched off.  I could tell that I was on the edge of the Peak District as to my east it was mainly dark, whereas to my west I could clearly see all the light pollution from the towns of north Cheshire and Manchester.

Shining Tor Trig Point

The bright lights of Manchester and North Cheshire

My eyes had now adjusted to the dim light and I could pick out the slabbed path relatively easily due to the ambient light (not from the moon as it was cloudy, but from all the street lights to the west!).  I managed around a kilometre without my torch before the path became trickier to follow in the dark and hence returned to the car by torch-light, where I arrived just before 10am after a pleasant couple of hours.

N.B. 13/02/13 - Post date updated to actual date of walk, i.e. 11/11/12 (from 15/11/12)