Approaches To Kinder I: Jaggers Clough

After being commissioned to shoot some photos from the top of Jaggers Clough, I finally decided to do the walk up it from Edale to get a feel for the place.

The walk along from Edale is pretty straight forward - after walking up through the village you turn right at the church to head down a pretty obvious path just below the graveyard. This takes you through numerous valley-bottom fields and farms until you reach the main Hope-Edale road. After a few minutes walking along this, through Nether Booth, you turn left into an overgrown path which soon leads onto a much more well worn farm track. This takes you straight up to the bottom(ish) of Jaggers Clough - at which point you no longer need directions. I'd say this walk, at it's hardest gets to about a [2], maybe a [3] at a push - but most people should be fine. If you've not seen already, these numbers can be made more meaningful by having a quick look at THIS post. 

Approaches To Kinder, The Key.

After my many, many walks up onto Kinder Scout I am finally starting to feel like an expert. This weekend I went for my final 'major' approach to Kinder from the southern flanks, starting at Edale - Crowden Clough. Unfortunately, there is a distinct lack of information regarding the difficulty of each of these 'clough' climbs on the internet (or at least, I couldn't seem to find it) - so I have taken it upon myself to create a series of posts describing each. This is mainly because this most recent approach ended in failure - I knew it was a challenging one but upon reaching a steep scramble/climb at the top had to turn back because not everyone in the party was willing to climb it.

So, for this series of posts I'm toying with the idea of using the following ranking system - as it is what I know...

1) If you're like my Mum - you should probably turn back wherever I insert anything greater than a [1] in the text. This would be if you have absolutely no head for heights. A slanting path about 4 yards up would make you very nervous, anymore and it's too much.

2) If you're like 'old me' - more than happy, if not keen, to be high up, but so long as you have a 'falling gap' - a body length - between yourself and any edge. I'll shove a [2] in wherever this applies. Less than a 'falling gap' and you wouldn't want to be near any physically dangerous edges, or slopes greater than 30 degrees.

3) Current me - the more I walk, the more I desensitise myself. The top of Winnats Pass used to terrify me, all of 6 months ago, but now it is nothing. You no longer need such a large 'falling gap' between yourself and edges, and can generally manage slopes greater than 30 degrees - even if you don't fancy turning round too much on them. Probably somewhere around average. As you may have guessed by now - this would be a [3].

4) The Dan - slightly more adventurous than my current self, but still somewhat sensible (bordering on crazy, especially if paired with no.5 - the two together love to show off). Anyway, a [4] means a Dan can do it.

5) The Dad/Bob- fearless/stupid, whatever you want to call it. You don't care about sheer drops, edges or cliffs in the slightest. A breeze could knock you off? So what, you love to show off and stand on the edge. If I put a [5] you have to be a relative mentalist to give it a go.

Now, this list does not take into account you really outdoorsy types. I love to get out, spent my childhood in the Dales and get out into the Peak whenever I can now - but have little experience on the real mountains, with rock climbing and difficult scrambles. For you people, I'm sure you'll be fine - but this is very much aimed at the regular folk.

So - enjoy the posts and hopefully I'll have finally contributed something worthwhile to the internet.

• Jaggers Clough
• Crowden Clough

Win Hill Sunset

This set of photos is from April, one of my first post-snow outings of the year and whilst it is always enjoyable to make the short walk up to Win Hill from Hope (oddly, I think this was the first time I'd done it when it'd been light?!?) - it was made all the more interesting by the seemingly millions of lambs. Some behaving better than others... 

Spring Sunset Around Higger Tor/Stanage Edge

Towards the end of April I took a late evening stroll up from Grindleford, through Padley Gorge and the Longshaw Estate, over Carl Wark and Higger Tor to Stanage Edge. Whilst there was lots of nice light it was the first time I'd been out in a while, so was first and foremost just a very enjoyable walk - although, of course, that didn't stop me taking a few pictures... the sun somewhat fizzled out just as it was reaching it's most colourful - as it sunk into a thick bank of mist on the horizon which made it get surprisingly dark even before sunset had technically happened. The train back wasn't for another 90 minutes so I had some time to wander around amongst the late climbers and have a quite snack in the darkness at Carr Head rocks, overlooking Hathersage.

I've taken lots of shots of Carl Wark in all sorts of conditions, but this is probably one of my personal favourites - even with the endless brown heather!

Wild Camp No.1

Seems an age ago now... but right at the start of May, sick of not seeing a sunrise for a whole month, I decided to go camping. Those of you that have been following my photo-ing for a while will know that I don't have a car (I can in principle drive, but this is the life of a student who spends all his PhD money on photo gear) so I rely on the Hope Valley train line to get me places. The earliest train is 6.20am, arriving about half an hour later - which for the winter months is absolutely fine (if quite an effort to rush up hills in time) - but this was my first summer of serious photography so it didn't take long for me to get itchy feet.

As usual, all the photos in this post are available, or can be made available, on my website.

I've never woken up to a better view.

Edale Skyline

Ow do everyone!

It is quite unbelievable just how behind I am these days - so much for what started as my 'I'll post every week' rule, which then became 'every two weeks' and is now somewhere around the yearly mark. I thought I'd best put this one up though as for me, it was quite an achievement - my longest walk ever at 22.5 miles (until the 3 Peaks in two months time). A good few miles longer than my previous best, 17 miles in deep snow - which can be seen here.

This is a very well known charity-type walk, and some crazies even run a variation of it in the Edale Skyline Fell Race - so it was something I'd been meaning to do for quite a while. Starting in Hope, you walk (as the name suggests) around the skyline of the upper Hope Valley, overlooking Edale. This takes in Crookstone Out Moor, Kinder Scout, Brown Knoll, Lord's Seat, Mam Tor, Back Tor and Lose Hill, so plenty of ups and downs - but I thought I'd also include a couple of detours. The larger detour being to include Win Hill by walking up around the back near Ladybower before continuing along the usual route - and also a shorter, boggier detour to what *was* the highest point on Kinder Scout.

Great Shunner Fell

A couple of weeks back we went for a lovely warm walk up the 3rd tallest hill in the Yorkshire Dales, Great Shunner Fell - which overlooks both Swaledale and Wensleydale. In general there seems to be no good round walk from Thwaite as there is only a single path up, the Pennine Way, which continues south to Hawes. So whilst there will be no spectacular photos in this post I thought it might be useful to someone, somewhere, to see how we did it - especially navigating the dreaded peat bogs on our chosen route down.

Steep sided Buttertubs Pass - some lovely light too.