The Roaches

The Roaches is a gritstone escarpment, situated in the Staffordshire Moorlands and rising to a height of 1,657 feet. The name comes from the French les roches, meaning the rocks, and the ridge marks the south-western edge of the Dark Peak area of the Peak District National Park.

The whole ridge, along with other gritstone formations across the Peak, is the result of prehistoric river deltas which laid down sand and grit over the limestone sea bed. Eventually, these became covered over with mud and coal and then compressed over millions of years to form the harder gritstone rock. With the moving of the tectonic plates, England was pushed up out of this sea and erosion did the rest, leaving exposed edges and outcrops of the harder millstone grit.

At the end of The Roaches, separated by a col, is Hen Cloud, which rises steeply above the surrounding land, making a particularly dramatic statement and revealing the layering from when the first rocks were formed, around 300 million years ago.

The Roaches provide some of the best gritstone climbing in the country, which explains why, during reading week, eldest son Mark and a group of fellow climbers came all of the way here from Cumbria; though I did splutter down the phone a bit when he told me that, having just gone all the way up to the Lakes for uni, he was trekking back to home turf to climb! 

Besides, it gave him the opportunity to spend a couple of days at home after they'd done :)

At The Roaches stayed in Rock Cottage, a tiny house built originally as a gamekeeper's home and now converted into a climbing hut, owned by the British Mountaineering Council. It is just visible behind Mark, up through the trees on the edge of the photo.

And, looking the other way, is Tittesworth Reservoir, constructed between 1959 and 1963, to supply water for Leek and Stoke on Trent.

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Incidentally, if anyone has a few spare millions lying around, The Roaches are up for sale. Currently the whole Roaches Estate is owned by the Peak National Park, but it is not normal practice for Park Authorities to own land, so they are looking for a buyer. It'd just better be someone who wants to care for the area, not exploit it!

The Pack

Just over a week ago, I came here to meet a friend for lunch. It had been snowing the previous day, but had cleared just enough to make the journey look interesting without affecting my ability to travel.

This is my friend's local hostelry, and a very good one it is too. The Pack, as it is known locally, is in the village of Hathersage in the Hope Valley towards the north of Derbyshire. It is a beautiful area which is popular with walkers, but also attracts climbers who come to try their skills on the gritstone 'Edges' above the village. This is where the White and Dark Peaks collide.

Hathersage is probably most famous for its association with Little John, who is reputedly buried in the churchyard at St Michael's, but it also has connections with Jane Eyre. After visiting Hathersage in 1845, Charlotte Bronte selected it as the model of her village 'Norton' She also chose the local family name of Eyre for her heroine; and the roof from which Mrs Rochester jumped to her death, crowns the Elizabethan manor house, North Lees Hall.

The Pack itself is situated on one of the old trading tracks which connected Derbyshire to Sheffield and further afield. As such, it was a regular port of call for travellers, and for the Scottish Packmen, who sold their tweeds to local farmers. Hence the name.

If the Packmen were served food as tasty as ours, I would imagine they would trade in the area frequently.

Benefitting from Beeching? : 'How the Trail Became'

The Peak District National Park (incidentally, the oldest in the world!) is divided into two distinct regions. The White Peak has a limestone base and is characterised by it's rivers, dales and rocky outcrops. Further north, the grit stone based Dark Peak is a land of wild moorlands and wide open spaces.

Traversing the White Peak, the Cromford and High Peak Railway was opened in 1831 as a link between the Cromford Canal at High Peak Junction and the Peak Forest Canal at Whaley Bridge. At the time it was a feat of engineering, being one of the first long distance routes (33 miles) and climbing to a height of 1,266 feet. In comparison, the highest working railway summit today is Ais Gill on the Settle-Carlisle line at 1,169 feet. C&HPR was built as an alternative to a canal and served to carry coal, stone and eventually cotton.

In 1899, it was joined by a second line, the Tissington Railway, which ran from Parsley Hay, 13 miles south to the market town of Ashbourne; from where there was a link to the main line at Rocester. At one time, milk from Derbyshire farms was transported down the Tissington line, onto the main rail network and from there to Finsbury Park in London.

Unfortunately, neither of these lines survived the Beeching axe, closing in stages through the 1960s. In 1971, however, the lines were given a new lease of life, being re-opened - in a joint venture between the Peak Park Planning Board and Derbyshire County Council - as trails for walkers, cyclists and horses. And so 'became' the Tissington and High Peak Trails.

Last May, I had the pleasure of walking a section of the Tissington Trail with a class of Y3 children. It rained (no surprise there then) and the back stragglers complained more and more with every step (awww! - we did a whole 3 miles!), but we had a great time, found loads of evidence of the trails original usage and, because it was a weekday, didn't even have to dodge many cyclists.

Almost the last section of our walk took us down the dip where once stood the Seven Arches. Sadly, the viaduct was demolished, but at least the new path took us right down to the level of the brook and the wooden bridge which crosses it.