Stanage Edge and Hathersage

Our parking place on the moor was quite exposed and the night was cold, wet and windy - Kiki was rocking about until the wind dropped at midnight. Seasoned professionals that we are, we snuggled down under our thick duvet and had a surprisingly good sleep. A 7am this morning it was a little nippy as we had breakfast but the sun soon came out to give a beautiful clear morning.

We drove about 2 miles further onto the moor to the parking area below Stanage Edge. This would have been a great place to park last night if it wasn’t for the no overnight parking signs…. spoilsports! We donned our boots and layered up before settling out on our hike.

A steep climb up from the parking area brought us to the top of Stanage Edge. This impressive gritstone escarpment rises over 100m above the valley and is popular with climbers and paragliders. Today there were a few climbers taking shortcuts to the top.

We walked a mile or so along the edge admiring the views before descending to the head of the valley. Circumnavigating the valley we climbed up and over into the next before heading down into Hathersage.

By this time we were thirsty so we popped into a cafe over an outdoors shop. We had a pint of squash each and shared a large bowl of chips before setting out on the return leg.

The climb up out of Hathersage was long and tough but we finally made it back to Kiki.

We drove about 7 miles to the Three Merry Lads pub which is on the extreme western edge of Sheffield. For the princely sun of £19 we get to stay in their carpark with electricity hook up (toasty warm tonight and a long hot shower in the morning) and as much water as we need!

We’re quite tired after our 7.5 mile hike today so we had our evening meal and settled down for the night.