I had been planning to walk these two edges for some time, the lure of other parts of the dark peak always seem to draw me away from there. Stanage is a very popular place amongst Peak District walkers but I must admit I haven't devoted much time to it in the past, having only walked it once before. So I decided it was high time to give it a go again, the conditions today were looking relatively good so I called my mate Andy and we set up a plan.
I met up with Andy at the Fox House Inn near Hathersage at around 9:30, We wasted no time at all and set off walking into the icy wind. the route took us from the Inn, northward along the road for about 50metres and then westward over the field to start walking along Burbage Rocks. I have visited this particular section of the walk a few times in the past while out Geocaching. The rain was holding off at this point so in no time at all we had crossed the road, passed Cowper Stone and were on Stanage Edge itself.
The wind had become allot stronger at this point and it was making it hard to walk in a straight line at times, we have had a lot of rain in the last few days so the edge path was fairly waterlogged and muddy in places. The rain had begun to fall so by the time we got to High Neb my waterproofs had been given a thorough testing, I'm very pleased to report that my new Berghaus Paclite Shell performed really well and kept me nice and dry. After High Neb we continued on for another few minutes before swinging westward and going off piste towards the top part of Bamford Edge. We crossed the moors and made our own route as there is no direct footpath linking the two edges at this point.
As I mentioned earlier, I have walked Stanage Edge once before but I have never walked Bamford Edge. I have seen it many times from the road and from the surrounding hills and have always fancied giving it a go. The thing that gave me the push to do it was seeing a blog post a few weeks ago over at http://backpackingbongos.wordpress.com. The blog post in question is "A perfect winters day on Bamford and Stanage edges". It was the picture of a wintry Bamford Edge that made me realise I had to give it a go, I captured a similar version of that image below and it was allot less wintry today. I will return again soon hopefully with my DSLR as this has got to be one of the best view points in the Peak District.
We stayed for a short while to admire the view from Bamford Edge, then continued walking southward and we were off the edge in no time at all. We had made our way back down to the road then looped back around to the east and headed up onto Stanage edge once again.
I have recently purchased an iPhone 4S and decided to move from 02 to Orange, mainly because the signal is so terrible with O2 in the Peak District. Today is the first day I've been out walking with my new toy, so it's the first chance I've had to test what the signal is like on Orange. I must say I have been very pleased with it. While driving into the Peak District there were places where I had full 3G signal and would have had no signal whatsoever with O2. So in this first test alone I am extremely pleased that I decided to switch.
The walk was over before we knew it and we were soon back in the Fox House Inn drinking coffee planning next weeks outing. As I had been broadcasting to location data to Social Hiking I had been having twitter conversations with people who were following our progress today. It just so happened that Richard (@BarneyTheBear) was in the area so he met up with us for a drink at the Fox House, We chatted about Peak District routes and all things Hiking. On my way home I recorded another AudioBoo about today's wander, I have promised that I would keep this up and record one after every outing.
As I explained before, I have moved from 02 over to Orange. This second Boo is an explanation as to why I needed to switch and a review off how they both compared today.
Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog and read this post, hopefully you enjoyed listening to my Derbyshire accent via the embedded AudioBoos. I will be out again in the Peak District next week so there will be more content for you to Read, listen to and hopefully watch if the weather permits.
I have mentioned numerous times in this post that I've just become the proud owner of an iPhone 4S, I have written this entire post with the vocal recognition feature. So far I'm really impressed with it, it can even decode my Derbyshire accent :-)
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