Today would be a bit of a tester as for obvious reasons the last few months haven't see us do much hiking, never mind any particularly steep climbs. So I was really looking forward to meeting up with friends for half a day.
Now normally I am early, I really don't like arriving anywhere late, but today for a number of reasons I turned up around 15 minutes after the time we had agreed to meet, in fact a couple of the guys had already been there for 30 minutes!
The first thing I was met with apart from the obvious 'taking the ****' for being late, was complaints about the fact that the cost of parking had gone up from £5 to £6; now I don't claim to be some sort of Rockerfeller but it is all for a good cause isn't it? My biggest concern was finding a parking space in the car park in Edale village as it was really busy which was surprising for 8:45. That said, all the walk was really busy so clearly many people had wanted to take advantage of the good weather.
It shouldn't have been that surprising that the first part of the walk was busy as it is the start of the famous Pennine Way, so it was never just going to be just the five of us on that section of the walk. The first couple of miles is a gentle rise and fall, but then you come up to Jacobs Ladder and the subsequent section of rocky path which is only just over half a mile, but goes up over 600ft which is quite a slog over a relatively short distance, so by the time you reach the top you know about it!
Thankfully at the top of this section most people turned right up onto Kinder, but we headed left and took the route over Brown Knoll, a fairly flat moor with excellent stone paths. The original plan was to meet up with Rushup Edge, head over to Mam Tor and then back downhill into Edale, however given the time we cut the route a little short and took the Chapel Gate track back downhill and on into Edale village.
Our walk had taken us around 10 miles, over 1,700ft of ascent and covered nearly four and a half hours, so not a bad workout and with some great views. A half day to be remembered.
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