Derwent Valley and Win Hill

Saturday 1st August 2020

Once the local lockdown had lifted I took advantage of good weather to head back out into the Peak District driving up the M1 to Ladybower Reservoir which I planned to walk all the way around including the top of Win Hill. However, when I got to the village of Grindleford I found that the road to Hathersage was closed and rather than taking a diversion I parked on the outskirts of Grindleford and set off on a walk from there. The problem with this was that I had no walk planned as I was too far away from Ladybower Reservoir to walk around there so I just wandered through the village musing about my options until I reached the River Derwent where, after a moment’s thought, I turned right heading south along the Derwent Valley Heritage Way into Horse Hay Coppice. There I left the trail and climbed the hillside through the woodland towards Froggatt Edge until eventually I decided that instead my best option was actually to head north, so turning around I headed back down the hill onto the Derwent Valley Heritage Way passing the bridge where I had earlier joined the trail and continued to follow the river. My thinking was that I had a map for the northern Dark Peak, since that is where I’d planned to walk, but I didn’t have a paper map of the southern White Peak, though it was on my phone.

Although I was a little too far away from Ladybower Reservoir I thought it was still possible for me to climb Win Hill so I followed the Derwent Valley Heritage Way beside the river initially through fields, but the scenery improved as I passed through Coppice Wood, though this was a brief interlude in a dull walk. Despite hot weather the day before it had now cooled significantly and the temperatures were much more comfortable for walking with patchy cloud and some sunshine. After passing the road south of Hathersage I was now following a route that I had taken a couple of times before with the first in 1998 on what I consider to be my first backpacking walk going from the youth hostel in Hathersage to the youth hostel in Edale. This was repeated in 2011, but the first section beside the river is lacking in interest except for a brief passage through Goose Nest Wood where the path keeps to a narrow ledge above the river. Crossing the main road I passed a garden centre and kept on the Derwent Valley Heritage Way following the Thornhill Trail, which is an old railway line built to aid in the construction of Ladybower Reservoir. This is not the route that I had taken in 1998 or 2011 and gave me little to ascend until I reached the end of the Thornhill Trail at the foot of Parkin Clough.

I was now on my originally planned route for the day at the beginning of my main target of interest on that walk, which I had now been able to incorporate into this hastily invented walk from Grindleford. I wanted to do a steep, rocky ascent and thought the path beside Parkin Clough up Win Hill would satisfy that desire so eagerly I set off up the steep, stony path beside a stream in bright sunshine and under dense woodland. This was a really steep climb and very exhausting in the warm weather, but it was exactly the sort of tough climb that I had been looking for. Initially I was enjoying every moment as I slowly made my way up the hill but as I got hotter and hotter and more and more worn out the path seemed to get steeper and steeper. Finally, mercifully, the gradient eased slightly, but with still plenty more to climb I slowly dragged myself up the hillside and I didn’t really feel better until I came out of the wood onto open moorland into a cooling breeze with only a short climb left that led me up to the top of Win Hill. The path in Parkin Clough had been quite busy but that was nothing compared with how crowded was the top of Win Hill so I dropped off the ridge, out of people’s way, and took in the views across the half-empty Ladybower Reservoir.

While eating my lunch dark clouds came over so now in cooler conditions I set off down the southern side of Win Hill past gorgeous purple-flowered heather until I reached farmland where I turned left onto a bridlepath past lovely harebells and other wildflowers slowly heading towards Hope railway station. Before I reached the station it started raining, which had been forecast, so I donned my cagoule before continuing on past the station onto the main road and into the small community of Brough where I took a narrow road that heads up into the hills with the rain eventually stopping before I reached the top. I was heading up a rather indistinct hill with no real summit and although I had considered various options I decided to ignore the vast bulk of Abney Moor to my left, though I did try to reach the top of Bleak Knoll to my right, but I found nothing there. A trig point adorns the nearby Durham Edge but this is not on access land so I descended back onto the track across Abney Moor slowly descending as the weather improved and the sun came out again. The descent steepened into the delightfully wild and overgrown Bretton Clough that I had never seen before, mainly because there are no footpaths along its length, but would reward investigation.

Steeply climbing out of the valley brought me onto a ridge where a long section of road walking took me through Bretton, over Sir William Hill and down into Grindleford. This was not the walk that I’d intended and not the weather that I’d expected with very different conditions to the heatwave of the day before. Parkin Clough, though, was an exhausting, but an exhilarating climb on a rocky path in fabulous woodland surroundings to the heather-clad top of the popular Win Hill. Although the long walk at the end along the road had not helped, it was good to get out for a walk after the lockdown.