Little Hayfield

June 3, 2015

LITTLE HAYFIELD, PARK HALL, THE KNOT, MILL HILL, CHUNAL, KNARRS FARM, THE LITTLE MILL AT ROWARTH, LANESIDE FARM, THE LANTERN PIKE AT LITTLE HAYFIELD

Distance: 9 miles

Difficulty: Moderate

Weather: Sunny, with cold wind on tops

Walkers: Peter Beal, Tom Cunliffe, Laurie Fairman, Mark Gibby, Julian Ross

Apologies:  Colin Davison (unspecified activities), George Dearsley (in Turkey), Alan Hart (funeral), George Whaites (Alaskan cruise)

Leader: Beal​​Diarist: Beal

Starting point: Lantern Pike Inn at Little Hayfield

Starting time: 9.35am​Finishing time: 2.23pm

A national spelling competition for kids last week included the word 'dromomania'. This apparently is an uncontrollable psychological urge to wander. People with this condition spontaneously depart from their routine, travel long distances and take up different identities and occupations. Months may pass before they return to their normal lives.

Our five-strong Wednesday dromomaniacs this week enjoyed glorious sunshine on a little-visited route over the moors to Mill Hill from Little Hayfield, albeit with a biting cold wind on the near-2,000-ft high part of the route.

We were also pleased to welcome virgin dromomaniac Mark Gibby, who hopefully was not too appalled by our behaviour and will join us again.

We left the Lantern Pike in Little Hayfield on the dot of 9.35am and shortly after taking the main road to Hayfield, turned left over the road on to the track leading in to the wooded Park Hall estate.

Park Hall was the retirement home of 18th century entrepreneur Joseph Hague, who while not actually stooping to making money from the slave trade directly, apparently acquired vast wealth by selling off-cuts for them to use as loincloths.

A gate at the top of the estate brought us out on to the expanse of Middle Moor (9 min), where a sign told us that a project to rid the moor of rampant rhododendrons was still under way, although most of them seem to have been eradicated.

We eschewed the normal route ahead of us through the heather and turned left along the side of the clough and stream leading up the moor.

The path brought us out on the track that links the shooting box on Middle Moor to Carr Meadow (30 min). Here we carried straight on, on a faint Land Rover track through the heather that climbed steadily to bring us to the first of a line of shooting butts with the hill of The Knot just above us to the left. Here Tom spotted a mountain hare skipping away across the heather as skylarks chirruped overhead.

The path continued upwards through the heather, passing other well-concealed and numbered shooting butts, some with spent shotgun cartridges still lying in them, until we reached the last (no. 10). Here we cut right across the top of a peat grough to join another path coming from the right from the shooting box below (50 min).

An easy walk across rising squelchy ground brought us to the top of 1,761 ft Mill Hill (70 min), topped by a cairn. A six-foot pole previously mounted among the rocks had mysteriously vanished.

We did not linger in the cold wind but turned left along a stone-flagged path that would eventually bring us to the Hayfield-Glossop road at Chunal. Shortly afterwards we took advantage of the little shelter there was to declare pie-time at a depression in the peat (87 min).

This was the location of one of the many air-crash sites dotted around the High Peak, most of them from World War 11 or shortly afterwards. Here wreckage from a US Air Force Liberator strews the ground over a wide area. The aircraft was on a routine flight from the massive USAF base at Burtonwood near Warrington to Norfolk in 1944 when it is recorded that it should have been flying at 2,800 feet.

Apparently the flight engineer, a Staff Sergeant Jerome Najver, glanced out of the window to see the moor 150 feet below him in the cloud. He wrested the controls from pilot 2nd Lt Creighton Houpt (you couldn't make these names up could you?), but to no avail. The plane ploughed through the heather and disintegrated.

Both men survived, made their way to Chunal, and were picked up by a lorry driver who took them to the nearest pub.

The most severe injury was a broken jaw suffered by the unfortunate Creighton - reputedly inflicted by his mate Jerome for being such a lousy pilot. Apparently the plane had only managed to take off from Burtonwood on the third attempt in high winds, demolishing several runway lights on the way.

Leaving the evidence of the hapless Crieghton's incompetence behind us we continued rapidly down the flagged way towards the faint rise of Burnt Hill. Cresting this we dropped down easy ground to a stile accessing the main Hayfield-Glossop road at Chunal(110 min).

Laurie here spotted a golden plover above us, apparently an endangered species in this part of the world, although more common on our coastlines.

We crossed the road and took the Monk's Road immediately opposite. We took a brief diversion left on a short track to see a concealed stone with a sign declaring it 'Abbot's Chair', presumably a reference to the ecclesiastical route nearby, but more probabaly merely a boundary stone.

Very shortly after we turned left up a track which brought us to Knarrs Farm (132 min). Veering right in front of the house we crossed stile in to a field, bore left and continued down to another stile until reaching a stile and gate bringing us to a metalled road (147 min).

Here we turned immediately left through a metal gate to take track down over the moor, reaching another gate, where we turned right down a track to rejoin the same road. We turned right, past Kings Clough Head Farm, and arrived at the bottom of the metalled road, where we went through a gate and down a track to a brook (160 min).

Fording this, we continued left over a stile and through a meadow, bringing us to a small bridge, over which we turned right to bring us to a concrete track. We turned right over a ford, then immediately left over a stile on to a path bringing us out in the village of Rowarth.

Turning left, then immediately right down a narrow path brought us out at 12.28pm (170 min) to the welcoming Little Mill Inn, where the excellent Robinson's Wizard Amber Ale was on at £2-80 a pint. Bank's Bitter was the same price.

We turned right out of the pub and continued up the road to the converted Laneside Farm (185 min), taking the track to the right, climbing steadily over slanted rocks, until the track levelled out and we stopped for lunch (195 min).

We carried on to a junction of tracks, where we turned left before reaching a gate. Turning right, we headed along the ridge leading towards Lantern Pike before descending left to a stile (235 min).

We followed the narrow path down through the heather before emerging at a stile,where we turned left over another stile, bringing us down to the stream below the Clough Mill apartments, where we turned left up the lane to the Lantern Pike Inn.

Here we were greeted by the mysteriously absent walker Colin and he and your diarist were treated to a helping of landlord Tom's excellent chips and pints of Timothy Taylor's Landlord Bitter.

Next week's walk will start at 9.50am at the Queen's Arms in Taddington, with a refreshment stop at Monsal Head, before returning to Taddington at 2.15pm.