Chinley, Cracken Edge, Pennine Bridleway

Drove over to Chinley and parked up. Went a little further along the road and turned right and over a footbridge over the railway. We headed uphill through a park and came out on Stubbins Lane, turned left and then right onto a track with rock walls and dry stone walls. We followed this all the way to the top of the hill, where the wall turned to the left and so did the path, heading towards Cracken Edge. We continued over more level ground to a winch at the top of an inclined plane, just below the quarry workings.


We followed the path along below the various quarries, stopping for a quick hot drink and a snack until we came to an isolated house/barn called Whiterakes, where a guy was happily getting his Range Rover stuck in the mud. We'd almost reached the road by the time he caught us up and he then turned around and seemed to be waiting to go back up again. We crossed the road and walked a short distance along the grass verge and turned up another lane. Unfortunately our route went just off the edge of the bit of map that I'd got to look at at that point, so when we reached the Pennine Bridle Way, I clearly wasn't exactly sure where we were and we started tromping off down into the next valley, which suddenly began to look very familiar from our walks up to Kinder Downfall. We were about half way down when I realised that we'd gone completely wrong and turned us around. By that time I was starving hungry and would have liked to have stopped for lunch, but we trudged back to the gate at the saddle between two small hills and tucked ourselves in behind the wall. It was worth it, the views were spectacular and we were nice and sheltered. One or two people came past, but we were mostly in the company of skylarks, curlews and a solitary plover in the middle of the next field - good spot by Paul. We tracked back to where we'd initially gone wrong and turned up the Pennine Bridle Way heading south (rather than northeast!!). We were soon overtaken by four guys on mountain bikes as we followed the track along the south side of Mount Famine and just north of South Head, and dropping down the far side. Although the PBW continued another 3¼ miles to Perryfoot, we turned right and followed another track steeply down past Beet Farm to Hull End, where we left what had by then become a lane and headed off across the fields, to cross the A624 again and after a few more fields pick up another track into the back of Chinley. I was absolutely knackered by that time and extremely glad to see Paul's car!!