In the third instalment of “Walks that Mum’s not really keen on”, we hit the mother of all hills, Mam Tor. It’s not really the mother of all hills, it’s a pretty easy climb, but you know I like a play on words and Mam Tor means “mother hill”, so there you go! Now for a bit of education for you eager beavers out there – it got its name because of the frequent landslides on its eastern face, which resulted in lots of little baby hills, hence the mother reference! The same landslides, which are caused by unstable layers of shale, give the hill its other nickname, “Shivering Mountain”. I’ll come back to the landslides later because the result of these, makes for a very cool part of this walk.
Mum thought we were doing a 6 mile walk, but Dad – quite wisely as it turned out – suggested we did the shorter 3 mile circular walk. We parked at the Mam Nick car park, which was around a 30 minute drive from home, up into the hills of the Peak District. A word of warning… the car park does not have a pay and display machine, you have to pay via an app. From the car park, it’s actually a very quick walk to the summit, first walking up some steps and following a path alongside the road to a small gate and National Trust sign. Then we went through a gate and to the left, climbing the stone steps until the ground begins to level out and then following the path to the top. We took in the views from the trig point, it was possibly the nicest day so far this Spring so you could see pretty far into the distance. We took a few obligatory photos and then followed the flagstone path north along the ridge.
We continued to follow the path down to a small monument and Mum was happy when Dad pointed out they were going to take a different path now, as if you go straight on from here, it gets pretty steep! Instead, we went through a gate to the right and downhill. As much as this was downhill, it was a tiny rocky path and there was plenty of opportunity for Mum to slip and of course she almost did. Somehow she managed to take a few steps to balance herself, each one looking like the last before she’d fall over, but miraculously she stayed on her feet. Dad was glad she didn’t fall over, but obviously found the situation hilarious… he’d never seen anyone nearly go down in instalments like that before 🤣
We carried on this path before taking a right fork just before the trees, which took your around the woods to the left. In hindsight we should have gone the other way – which led to the same place – but were following the instructions Dad had found online, only this way had a few muddy bits to manoeuvre ourselves through. Dad almost lost his boot to the mud, but we made it through largely unscathed. The path took you to a road and then through a gate to another road… a very broken road! In 1979, the continual battle to maintain the Manchester to Sheffield road on the crumbling eastern side of the hill was finally lost when the half mile Mam Tor section of the road officially closed. It is a bewildering sight… a twisted, snapped and buckled strip of black tarmac, which has been contorted into the most unimaginable shapes and structures.
This was as good a place as any to have a pit stop. Mum had made New York deli-style sandwiches with Pastrami, Swiss cheese, gherkins and a little Polish mustard. No picnic is complete without either a pork pie, sausage roll or scotch egg… we had them all! Dad likes a savoury treat and you’d guess that if you saw his belly. Fed and watered we set off again. At the end of the broken road, we passed through a gate and parking area, then turned left down to track to Blue John Mines. It was of course not open today (“Up Yours Corona!”) but we agreed we might come back one day to visit this show cave and see the rare mineral after which it’s named.
“Nearly done now” said Dad, although Mum wasn’t having any of it. We passed through a small gate just after the mine entrance and up a grassy path. At the top of the hill we went slightly right and then through another gate and over the next field before crossing the road. Over that road, we took the left fork, up the hill, where we came to the entrance of another cave called Windy Knoll. There were signs warning you not to enter the cave as it was dangerous and being the sensible folk we are, we took that advice. From the cave, all we needed to do was walk over the last field to a small gate by the road, which we then crossed before walking along the grass verge and back to the car park.
As it was still early, we decided to drive into Castleton, down through the awesome Winnats Pass and to the Visitor Centre car park, where we had a drink and the rest of our food. When Mum was waiting in the queue for the drinks, Dad text her to say she was in front of actor Chris Gascoyne, who plays Peter Barlow in Coronation Street. This was completely lost on Mum who has never watched Coronation Street. Yes, that’s right, she’s never watched the world’s longest-running television soap opera! We all chilled in the sun for a while before it was time to head back and how could I forget… we had a guest star of today’s episode… my good friend Ben de Woof, sheepdog to the stars! Mum loves Ben nearly as much as she loves me and definitely a bit more than she loves Dad! If you said otherwise, you’d be “barking” up the wrong tree! Whilst we’ve hit a new low, what do you get if you cross a sheepdog and a rose? A collie flower! On that note, roll credits!