Clayton goes to the Peak District

Hello readers! Last weekend was surprisingly sunny for September, and I made the most of this by taking a day out to the Peak District. I walked up to Kinder Scout, a moorland plateau housing the highest point in the national park.

The journey begins

I started my walk in Edale, a quiet little village with a population of 400 people and 4,000 cars. The main car park was already full by the time I arrived, and the so-called overflow car park was already filling up. It was manned by a small child in a hi-vis jacket, sitting on a plastic garden chair and charging five pounds for entry into what I can only assume was his parents’ field. If not, then that kid is a genius swindler. From the number of cars piling in, he must have made over a grand in one day.

Having been well and truly swindled, I turned my attention to the route ahead. With the weather so fine, I wasn’t the only one to have had the bright idea of going for a walk. Four thousand cars can carry a lot more than four thousand people, and most of them were already gunning for the hilltops. In every direction were swarms of hikers, ascending the peaks like chains of ants, following invisible pheromone trails towards the promise of jam and scones. It was truly a sight to behold.

Glorious weather

Last weekend was uncharacteristically warm for northern England – although what counts as “characteristic” in these days of changing climate is anybody’s guess. The temperature soared to a scorching 24 °C, which was hot enough for my chocolate digestives to start sticking together. The sky was a deep, cloudless blue, and the air rang with birdsong, gurgling streams, the tramping footsteps of forty thousand hikers, and the grumbling of my overheating walking companion.

Our route carried us along a valley, following a boulder-filled stream. It was very easy going for a mile or so, until the footpath frayed, and we ended up scrambling over rocks. The challenge of finding the optimal route and keeping our balance through such irregular terrain was a welcome puzzle, and I will never cease to be amazed by the speed at which some people scale these sorts of slopes. I was also very impressed by the teamwork on show between hikers and their dogs. Some of the smaller four-legged friends needed encouragement to find the right path, especially when faced with boulders nearly twice their height.

Kinder Scout

After scrambling up the head of the valley, I was faced with the flat expanse of moorland that is Kinder Scout. It is a stark, empty landscape: a smooth blanket of heather and peat bog, interspersed by protruding clumps of millstone grit. I have often reflected that the Peak District isn’t particularly peaky. Most of the uplands are flat – hummocky at best – and while the bleakness of this landscape is breathtaking, I always understood “peak” to mean something pointy. It’s all relative I suppose. In the land of the flat hills, the slightly lumpier hill is a peak.

I followed the southern edge of Kinder Scout, winding around a chain of rock formations that line the rim of the plateau. They have some great names: Crowden Tower, The Wool Packs, Pym Chair and Noe Stool. These are all outcrops of millstone grit, a dark grey rock made from large grains of quartz. Back int’ day, its composition and texture made it perfect for grinding flour, and in other parts of the Peak District, you can still find millstones that were abandoned after being carved from the cliff faces. Not here, however; I think it would have been too much effort to roll the millstones back to civilisation from Kinder Scout.

A quick, geological tangent

The millstone grit found in the Peak District formed during the Carboniferous, 300-360 million years ago, when the region lay in a basin covered by a shallow sea. Upland areas existed to the north and east, and the rivers flowing out from these regions dumped huge volumes of sand and grit into the basin. The region was situated near the equator at this time, but sea levels fluctuated in response to ice caps growing and shrinking at the south pole. When sea levels rose, the coastline was pushed further from the basin, and so only the finest silt was carried out and deposited. When sea levels sank, the coastline drew closer, putting the basin in reach of sandy river deltas. As such, the layers of rocks oscillate from fine siltstones to coarse gritstones – the product of global variations in climate.

However, most of the landscape we see today is a product of much more recent climate fluctuations. At the last glacial maximum 20,000 years ago, the region might not have been covered but ice, but it was certainly impacted by meltwater running in from the icecaps further north. The meltwater and wind-blown dust helped carve valleys and caves, and the erosion here must have been gentler than a bulldozing glacier in order for the delicate tors to have been preserved.

The moorland itself is now covered in peat bog. In some places, the footsteps of thousands of hikers have worn away gullies several feet deep, and although it is fascinating to see the hundreds of layers exposed, it couldn’t be more apparent that all these people are doing tremendous damage to the landscape. Peat takes thousands of years to build up, and centuries can be worn away over one summer by the boots of tourists. The National Trust has put flagstones down to encourage people to stick to the path, but this is still a work in progress. In areas without flagstones, there exists a vicious cycle: people wear down the path, it becomes deep and boggy, and so people walk at the edges of the boggy area, forming new paths, which then become deep and boggy. The result is a widening gouge across the moorland, and it will take decades to repair itself.

Down Jacob’s Ladder

My walk took me down from the plateau via Jacob’s Ladder, a famously steep portion of the Pennine Way. It’s a fantastic path around the side of a deep, narrow valley, and although I might have had gravity on my side, it wasn’t easy to descend such a steep set of steps without tripping and falling. That being said, I was having a better time than the people who passed me in the opposite direction, carrying their mountain bikes. That must have taken dedication on such a warm day – and I’m hoping that they didn’t attempt to bike down the way they came up.

At the bottom of Jacob’s Ladder is a beautiful old bridge, and from here, I followed the Pennine way back to Edale. This section of the walk, in the bottom of the valley, was very busy indeed. I felt as if I was on some kind of pilgrimage, with everyone trudging towards the distant, promised pub of prosperity, serving the eight-pound pints of swallowed pride.

Having passed through green fields with drystone walls, and meandered back through Edale with its ancient inns, squat little church and forty thousand cars, I made it back to where I started. The child in the hi-vis jacket had departed, but the sheer number of cars could attest to his swindlery. Here, beyond doubt, was the most profitable field in Derbyshire.

In summary…

Hope you enjoyed this ramble as much as I did! If you want to do this walk yourself, I would recommend arriving in Edale as early as possible, although you will get swindled either way. The National Trust have a map showing the route I followed – although I did it in reverse (scrambling up the boulders and down Jacob’s Ladder is easier than going up the ladder and down the boulders, if you ask me). Stay tuned for more reviews of science fiction and fantasy, more physics and Earth science, more reports of interesting places, and occasional book updates!