Beeley Moor and Harland Edge Trig Point

This 9 mile circular walk explores Beeley Moor and the Bronze Age burial cairn of Hob Hursts House, before heading to the Harland Edge trig point.

This is a moorland walk for the most part, using Open Access Land, so there are no paths in places. It’s a great one to do if you’re ticking off the Peak District Ethels or Peak District Trig Point Challenge – we did it at the same time as Birchen Edge, so bagged two trigs in one day.

The route starts from the National Trust car park at Birchen Edge and follows the road south-east for a short distance before heading onto Beeley Moor. Following the track for approximately 2.5 miles, you’ll come to Hob Hurst’s House, an unusual square prehistoric burial mound with an earthwork ditch and outer bank. It was named after a local goblin, or giant – bit of a difference sizewise! The site is owned by English Heritage and the stone markers with VR show the extent of the boundary. This was one of the first monuments to be taken into state care. Unfortunately there isn’t much to see but there is an interesting plaque giving the history of the site.

We set off from Hob Hurst’s House over the moors and headed south-east to Harland Edge to bag the Ethel summit. This involves a lot of yomping through heather as there are no proper paths, so we stuck to the shorter patches of heather. Top tip: wear long trousers! The heather was bone dry and thigh-deep in places, and very sharp. I wore shorts and my legs looked like they’d been attacked by a wolf for a few days afterwards!!

The Ethel summit isn’t really marked by anything but we did find a small stone shelter very close to what the OS App says it the summit, so we’ll go with that!

Small stone shelter at the summit of Beeley Moor

At Harland Edge trig point you have lovely views over the sea of heather (which I imagine looks incredible when the heather is flowering).

From here you have two options. We followed a faint path to the wall where you used to be able to get out onto the road, which took us past this lovely old waymarker. You can’t get straight out onto the road any more unfortunately as a fence has been erected with barbed wire. You can jump this (taking care not to scratch your nether regions on the barbed wire). Alternatively from the trig point head north-east to pick up the footpath that will take you back out onto the road.

This stile leads you to the footpath that runs to Hob Hurst’s House and the trig point

We followed the road until the junction with Syda Lane, then turned left and followed the track until it reached the A57 again. Here we walked back along the road to The Robin Hood pub, where they do a lovely Sunday lunch (plus kids under 8 eat free!). This scored very well on Holly’s rankings of pub food.