This Sunday I felt the need for a little adventure! So where better to go than the mighty Kinder Scout. For anyone not familiar with the area Kinder Scout is a moorland plateau around half an hour from home. At 636 metres above sea level it is the highest summit in the area. On a clear day you can see all the way to Mount Snowden in Wales…….but unfortunately not on Sunday. It’s also the scene of a very unfortunate accident on my part! This time I decided to walk, but last time I did a route in this area, in September 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, I ran it, on my own. I managed to fall quite spectacularly (nothing new there then) and gashed open the underside of my arm on a rock as I slid along the floor. I then had to drive myself to hospital one hour away, have a number of stitches and an x-ray, and later that week have the car cleaned of all the blood I had shared with the upholstery on the drive to hospital. On Sunday I thought I’d have another go, walking to see if I could remain upright.
Kinder Scout is described as offering ‘rewarding but challenging’ walks. You have to go up there prepared for bad weather, cloud and have the means to navigate as there are only a couple of ways down and you need to be able to find them. At this time of year ‘Kinder’ as we affectionately call it in the area keeps Edale Mountain Rescue Team very busy.
It’s also important to fuel for it and take food and drink with you. Now that can only mean one thing, an excuse for coffee and cake before attempting it. That however led to my sad discovery that Mike and Karen from Oggie’s Citreon Van cafe (in one of my earlier posts) are retiring! Oh no! What am I to do? Well, I’ve found a suitable alternative…………..the newly opened Castleton Coffee Co. in the beautiful village of Castleton, next to Kinder. Not only did it have wonderful coffee but my first mince pie of the year too. It does do breakfast too but I am quite capable of eating mince pies for breakfast…..I love them and I get really excited about Christmas when the mince pies start to appear.
So full of mince pie and caffeine I set off, past the houses and the river. I love some of the plants at this time of the year, lots of berries and some very pretty pink flowers on one shrub. This part of the world has some wonderful fields and hedges and I was really pleased to see a newly laid hedge in the traditional style as I left the village. These traditions and skills are so important to keep for wildlife and the preservation of the countryside and I think they look fantastic when they are done properly. That’s another one for my bucket list of courses…………I’d like to go on a hedge laying course, there are lots in the area on a weekend.
Then it was off up the Pennine Way and past Upper Booth Campsite and Farm. Now this campsite has very fond memories for me and I always take a picture of the sign when I walk past it and send it to the youngest of my two sons. The campsite is the scene of one his unfortunate events, he’s had many! We had just bought our first tent and were going on our first camping adventure, like you do when you have little boys. I took them here as it wasn’t too far from home but feels a million miles away as it’s quite remote. The campsite was quite basic and it felt like a bit of an adventure…….until he managed to lock himself in the toilets in the barn and could not unlock the door. I always used to say……”Don’t lock the door, I’m outside and I’ll ensure no-one comes in”. This is my inquisitive one though that likes to do the opposite of what you tell him to do. So what followed was an hour of me feeding him chocolate buttons through the gap in the door to keep him calm while everyone else tried to get the door open from the outside. We still laugh about it now and he’s nineteen.
Over the bridge and up over the stile (I’ve never been able to do this bit elegantly) and then you are onto the lower slopes of ‘Kinder’. I found a cow so all was well with the world! A bit of history about ‘Kinder’ now as it is responsible for a lot of what us walkers enjoy today in the UK. On 24th April 1932 it was the scene of ‘The Mass Trespass’. This was led by the ‘Young Communist League’ and was literally a mass trespass over privately owned land to highlight the fact that walkers were being denied access to areas of open countryside. There are varying reports as to how many people were involved in the trespass, from 100 to 3000. However, it led to violent scuffles with gamekeepers and the imprisonment of the organisers, but today in the UK it is remembered as one of the most successful acts of civil disobedience in history. It led to the National Parks Legislation in 1949 and the ‘right to roam’ on open access land. It also allowed the establishment of the Pennine Way, a 268 mile path from Edale to Kirk Yetholm near the Scottish border. So it is thanks to that act of disobedience that we get to enjoy these beautiful National Parks in the UK today.
You then start to climb the upper slopes. The view, with the sun trying to poke through the clouds, is beautiful. It didn’t quite make its way out on Sunday but it was trying. It was four season boots weather as it is always very muddy up there and they are needed for the terrain coming back down. There are also quite a few steams to cross on the way up and down so waterproof footwear is essential too. Half way up and my coat was off, even though it was quite cold, as it gets really steep. As usual I managed to go slightly off the path and ended up in a little peat bog, head poking up above the grass – if there is more than one way I can always be relied upon for choosing the wrong way! It’s common knowledge not to follow me on a walk. I’m either off in dizzy daydream land or that busy taking photographs I can very quickly have no idea where I am.
Eventually after around an hour you get to the glorious top. The views up there are fantastic normally, but not on Sunday as it was a little bit misty. I managed to find the ‘dragon rock’ and got the must have shot of having my arm chewed off, same picture just a different day but you just have to do it every time. Coat back on now, and bobble hat, as it’s always very blustery up there. Then a wander across the top of the plateau and across the peat bogs that it is so well known for. Fortunately now, to stop erosion, the National Trust and Peak District National Park have laid a path across the bogs, better for the bogs and the walkers! A few years ago, on a day like Sunday, you would have been up to your waist in peat.
Then the exciting bit……..coming down Grindsbrook to get off ‘Kinder’ and back into the Edale valley below. It’s not a walk it’s a scramble, there’s no walking involved for the first half mile, it’s just clambering and climbing down, using all four limbs and lots of splashing in the water. This is why they call it challenging and why it’s nice and quiet, because most walkers would not consider it a walk and would not attempt it. I love it though.
The approach into Edale is just lovely, through the woods, lots of sheep and as always on one of my walks……..the route ends at a pub! In this case the lovely ‘Old Nags Head’.
Only time for a quick visit to the pub though as my very special tea which I’d started this morning was on the timer in the oven at home and it was perfect for warming me up when I got in. Since I’ve come home from my trip walking in the summer I’ve really missed the Camino and that area. I love cooking too so when I got back from the Camino I bought some cookery books to recreate some of the lovely food until I return. My favourite is a book called Recipes from San Sebastian and Beyond by Jose Pizarro. Some of the ingredients are quite difficult to get hold of but this week my ‘El Avion’ Pimenton Dulce arrived from the food importers…….so time to try a new recipe perfect for today. Now I like a stew and this one is called ‘Sukalki’………… a Basque beef stew with potatoes, onions, peas, carrots and cognac (yes you get to flambe it……the best bit, and I managed to avoid the kitchen cupboards with the flames). It was delicious and I actually think my photo looks as good as the one in the book………..definitely a recipe to do again after a cold walk, it was delicious – Yum.
So all in all a lovely Sunday of adventure and good food. So if you are ever near the glorious ‘Kinder’ the route is up Crowden Brook, along the plateau, down Grindsbrook, and along the valley bottom, followed by half a beer and beef stew of course!