Grindleford | The UK is awesome mini-series 🌳

About the route…

This journey kicks off in the Grindleford train station, where you take a short walk into the Padley Gorge waterfalls & ancient woodland forest. The words elude me to accurately describe the beauty of this place! Take your most insane fantasy novel setting, the shire for example & you aren’t even close.

From here you move through into the Longshaw Estate which is awesome & has a variety of walking / running trails. You can also see plenty of wildlife here, so great for the kids!

Then it is onto Higger Tor via Toads Mouth, between Higger Tor & Millstone edge you get the most stunning views of the Peak district, then moving on to Lawrencefield, which is by far my favourite part of the trip! From here you begin the steep descent back down to the train station.

Story time 🏰

I had found myself a little spot by a river, way off the usual tracks & hadn’t seen another person for around an hour. What a beautiful day it was, the sun was shining, a light breeze bristling through the unblemished bushes & the gentle sound of the water trickling down the multitude of little waterfalls that make up the river. There were Butterflies of all colours & even a Dragonfly zoomed past. A place of truly profound serenity, in those moments it’s easy to forget where you are & feel like you’re the only person in the world. Alas, the peaceful retreat was short lived.

Usually, I am very child friendly, however this little spawn of the Devil was an absolute hooligan. A child (around 10 or 11 years old I would say), appeared out of nowhere, I could hear footsteps off in the distance so was looking around. As he approached he said “Excuse me Mr”, I am thinking what a polite young chap, but I was also worried as there was no sight of his parents or any other people, maybe he was lost. I asked him “Are you okay where are your parents?”, by this point I had stood up properly to look around. The little hooligan (hooligan is not the word I wanted to use, but for the purposes of keeping the blog PG, it’s hooligan), punches me full force in my baby making facilities. The hooligan starts giggling & runs off, although he was small it really hurt. It took me a few seconds to catch my breath & by the time I looked up, he was gone, completely vanished.

So at the very least I was the victim of assault, but given the proximity of the attack it probably should be upgraded to a sexual assault. After this I got back to the path & continued my journey, but the strange thing is I still didn’t see another person for around 30 minutes, but there are all sorts of woodlands etc so plenty of places I couldn’t see 🤔. If you are ever on this walking route, be careful if you get accosted by a young hooligan child! Even as I write this, I am still a little dumbfounded, but it can’t have all been in my head, I was still sore by the time I got back to Manchester 😂

Not all sheep are afraid of people, I found this out the hard way. When I go on these trips, I bring some bird feeder (you get a massive bag in Home Bargains for a few £’s). I was feeding some kind of bluebird or magpie type thing & a big ass sheep (I am not even sure the correct noun/plural for a singular sheep) started chasing after me, maybe it was bluffing but it had handy looking horns, so I wasn’t taking any risks!

When walking through Padley Gorge there are some really steep descents & lots of places to fall & do yourself a mischief. Being the big lazy toad that I am, I always try to invent shortcuts & take the quick route up or down hills etc even when there is no route. I couldn’t work out how to upload videos here, but I am starting a YouTube channel soon so will post there. I ended up falling down the side of a hill, it wasn’t high enough to kill me, but would have done quite a bit of damage. Thankfully I managed to roll onto my back & just slide down the side, so only a few cuts & bruises. The real issue was I couldn’t climb back up so had to cross the river, there was not many rocks & it was quite treacherous, albeit the river wasn’t deep, so I would have got soaked but not drowned. I had to go proper Lord of the flies & break a big branch off a tree to use as a walking stick to cross the river. All in all, a rather eventful day!

Some photos of the trip…

Where to eat & drink? 🍻🍽️

There is a cafe at Grindleford train station where you can get food, it is pretty basic but not too expensive & gets the job done. Further along at Longshaw estate there is a nice cafe, but it is quite expensive. It is run by the National Trust so I think the money goes into conservation etc (well that is what I convince myself of when I get hit for £7 for a bagel). The Fox house is a big country pub that looks awesome, although I have not been in yet.