On this beautiful crisp morning DiscoDeb, Jude and I set out for a jaunt over Mam-Tor. The journey there is a steady forty minutes and is just three roads from Leek; A53 to Buxton, straight over the roundabout next to the Palace Hotel (A6) and then turn off at the A623 for the last mile. We parked up at the ‘Mam Nick Car Park’ – One thing to note here, the Pay & Display machine ONLY takes debit cards, so don’t save your change up for the walk.
Follow the path up out of the car park and at the top you will come to a road which you cross to start the trail
The start is quite steep but is aided by an excellent walkway of slabs
What I love about Mam Tor is that you don’t have to go that far to get great views and once you are at the the top of this first incline the views (which are spectacular) are available (360 degrees) throughout the walk.
The first part of the walk is all along the ridge. I recommend you get some wind protection as it is very windy up here, and on this day in February it was bitterly cold. We were wearing our Peter Storm ‘Chutes’ (an all in one scarf) which were excellent and of course a hat. There isn’t much protection from the wind so do be prepared. In the summer, the breeze is very welcomed by walkers and also by the many para-gliders and hang-gliders that frequent this spot. Half way along the ridge you come to a very steep rocky climb to the summit. We decided to have a bit of a feed here by lighting up the stove and cooking pasta, which was no mean feat with the bracing wind!
The rock to the left is an excellent regular formation that seems out of place in this rugged part of the walk. Here’s Jude modelling it 🙂
At this point you are only about a quarter of the way into the walk. It’s depicted as No.2 on the map (at the end of the page). After leaving here the walk is quite straight but it undulates up and down slightly to the next summit. There is a bit of a stone wall which does give a bit of respite from the gusts.
The last summit gives you a full 360 degree view and has this compass at the top of it
From here we headed down the slabbed pathway until we came to a stone wall, at which point we turned right
The path (or lack of it) from here can be quite tough going as it is boggy in places. The walk starts to climb back up to the summit and even though underfoot is firmer, it is quite steep in places.
We climbed back up to (No.2) on the map and head back along the ridge for a few yards before heading back down. The trek down was very boggy but didn’t pose too much of a problem with the correct footwear (Berghaus Hillmaster II Gore-Tex – these are excellent). There is a steam to traverse (which probably won’t present a problem in Summer).
In the photo above you can see a green building in the distance. We walked past this and headed past a house with a stile which took us down to a road which we followed to a wooded area called ‘Brockett Booth’
Heading out of this wooded area leads to a ‘fallen’ road. This road looks like it has been hit by an earthquake! It twists through the valley and is quite magnificent as it dips and rises much like a San Francisco road.
We were now coming to the end of the walk. The road has totally fallen away at the end and there is a bit of a steep climb to get out. The sun was starting to set and the ‘golden hour’ was fast approaching which gave me a couple of great photographs
The walk is just under seven miles and I would class it as intermediate. Statistics and maps (Garmin VivoActive HR) are here:
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