Hartington Dales

We parked the Jeep in the public P&D car-park on the south-west side of Hartington, a pleasant market town in the Peak.
To start our walk we headed a very short way back into the town before cutting through an alley at the side of the public toilets and picking up the footpath heading south to Beresford Dale.
The path is very well marked and so we simply followed it south traversing Crossland Sides and around the flank of Pennilow, before entering the shade of Morson Wood.
This took us below Beresford Tower and into Beresford Dale crossing and following the River Dove.
Crossing the river again where the tarmac of Beresford Lane becomes a ford and an unsurfaced byway we headed south-west along a very soft damp meadow and entered Wolfscote Dale.
We continued along the Dale marvelling at the trees growing out of the rocky hillside before passing Drabber Tor and the Peaseland Rocks and the entrance to yet another dale.
Here we turned north up Biggin Dale, after a lunch stop, which is part of the Derbyshire Dales National Nature Reserve observing how the stream is only visible in short stretches, mostly being below the surface, making this quite a dry dale, but still providing the dog a few spots to paddle and cool down.
Biggin Dale divides into two at it's upper end, and we took the left hand western fork, away from Dalehead to the east, and left the dale after passing a small sewage works at Dale End.
A short 100m walk east along the road took us into the gravelled Highfield Lane and up over the hill, past high grassy meadows full of sheep with their new-born lambs.
The track brought us out to the east of Hartington onto High Cross Lane, which we followed into the edge of the town, before cutting left onto a narrow footpath that took us into fields and back to the car-park rejoining the road at a sculptor's workshop close to the public toilets.

Date Walked: 04Apr17
Distance: 6.5mi
Time: 3hr3min
Ascent: 684'
Descent: 663'

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Points to note

• These walks are listed as a record of walks that we have done. If you wish to follow them then you do so at your own risk.
• Distances given are those recorded on our GPS as Track Distance.
  Actual distance walked may be slightly longer, due to the way that the two distances are calculated. This article explains why.
• Times given may or may not include breaks.
• You'd expect on a circular walk that the Ascent and Descent values would be the same, right?
  Well, yes, but sometimes I didn't stop the track at the exact same place I started it, and also sometimes it takes a while to get a strong enough 3D fix for a reasonably accurate altitude setting.
• Any photos shown will be of the ground covered by the walk, but may cover more than one visit.