Climbing Win Hill With Chris

Fox House, Yorkshire Bridge, Win Hill, Hope Cross, Hope, and Brough.

As usual I met Chris at Fox House, then travelled in the car to Yorkshire Bridge. We parked in the parking bays just before the Yorkshire Bridge Inn and walked to the dam wall of Ladybower Reservoir to look at the 'plug holes' [bellmouth spillways]. They were very noisy today; there was a lot of water rushing down them.

The first path up Win Hill was dangerous, very muddy and slippery, so we took the path that leads up to Parkin Clough; still a difficult climb of 990 ft right from the bottom. I needed to stop for regular rests on the way up, Chris didn't; he only stopped because I was - he's a good few years younger than me though.

At the start of the walk it was quite cloudy, but by the time we reached the summit of Win Hill the cloud cover was breaking up, and so all the way to Hope Cross there were some excellent views of Lose Hill and the Great Ridge, Edale, and Kinder Scout.

On the trig point on the summit there was a pair of gloves weighted down with stones; I think you can just about make them out on the first photograph if you enlarge it. I wonder for how long they'll stay there?

Just beyond Hope Cross we started to descend, using a track that's popular with mountainbikers; I thought it might be called 'The Beast' - they do like to name their best routes (I watch quite a lot of mountainbiking videos online - they tend to be more interesting than the hiking ones.)

As it was there was a gasping mountainbiker pushing his bike up the hill and so I asked him if  this was 'The Beast.' He was glad to take the opportunity for a rest and told me that I wasn't 'riding The Beast' - it's actually the track that tumbles down to Ladybower Reservoir through the woods.

Chris was too far in front to pick up on the first double entendre of the day but he enjoyed the second one a few minutes later as we were waling through Backside Wood.

We continued along the river and the road to Hope, then taking a shortcut that comes out on the main Hope Valley road just before Hope Station.

We'd been walking at our quickest pace for the last half an hour, at my quickest pace though actually because Chris is a very fast walker. I was slowing him down; he wanted to get back to the car for four o'clock so that he would beat the football congestion at Hillsborough. So we decided to part at the turn-off for Aston where he could walk back to the car via Aston and Thornhill: I just waited for the bus.