Summer has definitely arrived this weekend in Derbyshire, so I celebrated with two days of walking and running in the Peak District.
Saturday started at Monsal Trail parkrun. I haven’t run it officially before – only a freedom parkrun on the old Bakewell parkrun course before it was re-branded post-Covid. It was a warm and sunny morning but the trees lining the trail offered frequent shade. I reached the 5k mark in around 19:45 but couldn’t quite get to the finish line under 20 minutes this time, clocking 20:01 in the results. At least I managed to get ahead of the man in the inflatable alien costume, even if only after 4km!
After parkrun, it was only a few minutes’ drive down to Baslow to start my day’s walk. I had planned to take in a few of the woodlands below the various eastern Edges in hope of some good displays of bluebells and spring foliage, and I was not disappointed!
Following my circuitous ascent to Wellington’s Monument, I followed the traversing paths below Baslow and Curbar Edges, finding more bluebells among last year’s dead bracken.
Then I continued along Froggatt Edge and down through Hay Wood to Nether Padley, before ascending Padley Gorge, with beautiful dappled sunshine among the oak trees. Some of the faster runners of the Hathersage Hurtle race were descending as I climbed.
Once I’d escaped the woods, I followed paths to Longshaw Lodge and there turned south to return to Baslow via White Edge and Baslow Edge, with super long-distance views over the moorland and the Derwent Valley. A map of my route is available here.
Ruth drove down to my house in the late afternoon. We ate together, then spent the evening comparing plans for the next Peak Raid MapRun event, which we would tackle the next morning. The race started in the small village of Combs, northwest of Buxton. I’ve explored Combs Moss in the past but not really the valley and village to the west.
My route was generally clockwise, up onto Combs Moss and south along the edges, then back north past Combshead and Allstone Lee farms. I then zigzagged west on various little-used footpaths through the farmland to pass over the southern shoulder of Ladder Hill, looping back down to the shore of Combs Reservoir for the final stretch back to Combs village. The terrain gave more technical running and more challenging navigation than the first race of this year’s series, so I covered about 1.5km less in the two hours, but was pleased to set the highest score so far on this course, having visited 29 of the 35 controls and finished with 2 minutes to spare.
Ruth’s route started similarly but omitted the big loop around Ladder Hill – good enough to be the leading female runner so far. We had lunch in the small park by the finish line, then took a short recovery stroll back down to Combs Reservoir. After that, we drove up onto the Cowlow road for another short walk onto the end of Combs Edge, to appreciate the scenery at leisure and take a few photos, before heading back to Hilton.
Two cracking days on and around the eastern and western gritstone edges in the sunshine! More photos can be found on Google Photos here.
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