Hope

AUGUST 6th, 2025

 

HOPE, CHESHIRE CHEESE, LOSE HILL LANE, LOSE HILL, BACK TOR, HOLLINS CROSS, MAM TOR, BLUE JOHN CAVERN, PEAK CAVERN, YE OLDE CHESHIRE CHEESE INN AT CASTLETON, PEAKHOLE WATER, HOPE PINFOLD, THE OLD HALL AT HOPE

 

Distance: 7-8miles. 

Difficulty: Moderate to strenuous.

Weather: Dry with blue skies and sunshine but a chilly wind. 

 

Walkers: Mike Cassini, Mark Enright, Hughie Hardiman and Coco 

Alternative walker: Jock and Kieran Rooney with Milly.  

Leaders: Hubert H. Diarist: Cassini 

Starting point: Edale Road, Hope, near Old Hall Hotel. 

Starting time: 9:30am. Finishing time: 2.00pm.

In keeping with tradition this is a bowdlerised  version of Alan’s diary of the 24th  of April last year when we last started from Hope – since then a number of embarkation points have been used with varying degrees of agreement. Hopefully, we won’t again start from the lay-by on the top road but may use the parking outside the Devils Arse which is still free on weekdays.   

Given the usual high number of apologies for absence Hughie and I believed we were on our own and so left the cars at about 9;30 and proceeded up Edale Road, Hope, away from The Old Hall on the corner of the main road through the village. After passing The Cheshire Cheese on our left (6mins) we turned left up Lose Hill Lane (12mins) before turning left again up Townhead (16mins). Shortly afterwards we turned right at a public footpath sign (18mins)and began a steady ascent.  

We now had the option of climbing up Lose Hill which intrepid Wednesday Wanderers have previously taken and along the top path. In memory of our lost leader we felt it only fitting that we took the low path through the small Copse as Alan had done, having a slow ponderous ascent rather than a stiff uphill struggle to the top of Lose Hill. Well, I did and Hughie agreed, so we took the path to Hollins Cross on the way to Mam Tor.

Hollins Cross is the point between Edale and Castleton where in days of yore pallbearers carrying coffins for burial in the churchyard in Castleton would pause for rest and refreshment. At this time there were no churches in Edale. 

As school was out Mam Tor was covered in small people and their dogs and parents making a usually accessible path a bit like the A555 where it meets the A6 on High Lane in the mid-afternoon, though perhaps a bit more scenic. As Hughie and I sat for pie-time we were joined by Mark who was slightly behind us in timings

Mam Tor, at 1,696 feet, is also known as The Shivering Mountain because it stands on unstable lower layers of shale which slip in bad weather. The unequal struggle to keep the A625 Chapel-Sheffield Road open was abandoned after it crumbled yet again in 1979.

 

 

We descended the hill, which was once a late Bronze Age and early Iron Age fort, to reach a road. We then turned left before the road and followed a well-trodden path which brought us out on the remains of the abandoned stretch of the A625. We turned left, passing the Blue John Cavern on our right. Eventually we left the broken section of the road and reached a roadworthy part, passing Winnats Pass on our right. 

 

This took us towards Castleton passing on our right the Speedwell Cavern (154mins), Goosehill Hall (164mins) and Peak Cavern (165mins) before reaching Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese Inn on our right (171mins). Here we joined Jock Kieran and Milly for a selection of cask bitters at £4- £4.50.  

This 17th Century coaching inn had several alcohol-related messages on its walls. One stated: “Without question the greatest invention in history is beer. I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with Innkeeper's Pie.”

Leaving the pub, we turned right along the main road towards Hope. At a green public footpath sign we turned right following the sign for Hope (174mins), passing a ruined mill on our left before reaching the right bank of a brook called Peakhole 

Water (178mins). Ahead of us was the unmistakable eyesore of Hope Cement Works. 

We crossed a railway line from the cement works and continued to a road (201mins) where we paused for lunch before turning left. This brought us to Hope Pinfold on our left (203mins). 

 

Here a plaque informed us that the circular walled enclosure had been used to keep stray cattle and sheep until they were claimed or sold at auction.

From the archives…..on a previous walk to Mam Tor.

We set off again at 11.05am, passing the Beehive pub on our left and heading down the road to a T-Junction. Here we went straight over past Bradshaw Hall, once the residence of judge John Bradshaw, president at the trial of Charles I. 

During his teenage years Bradshaw attended Macclesfield Grammar School (now The King's School in Macclesfield). After studying law in London he rose to high office. But Bradshaw was a controversial choice as Lord President, and opinions of his efficiency as a judge varied. Thomas Fuller dismissed him as a man “of execrable memory, of whom nothing good is remembered.”

The King himself, as well as much of the court, professed to having never heard of him. King Charles refused to recognise the authority of the court and would not plead. After declaring Charles I guilty as a “Tyrant, Traitor, Murderer, and a public enemy,” Bradshaw did not even allow the monarch any final words. Not even “I’m a Celebrity get me out of here!”

The Royalists, however, were to have their revenge following his death. After Charles II was restored to his throne in 1660, Bradshaw’s body was exhumed and displayed in chains all day on the gallows at Tyburn. Later he was beheaded, his body thrown into a common pit and his head displayed on a pike at Westminster Hall. Bradshaw, by the way, was played by Stratford Johns in the film Cromwell.

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Next week's walk will start at 9.40am from the free car park in Litton outside the Red Lion SK17 8QU. Kieran has kindly downloaded a route onto the Wanderers Whatsapp site which can be followed by those with the appropriate technology. 

Happy Wandering