Edale to Kinder Scout and Mam Tor | 12 Miles

April 15, 2024 CIRCULAR WALKS, LONG PEAK DISTRICT WALKS 10 MILES +, PEAK DISTRICT WALKS

If you’re looking for challenging walks near Edale, or Edale Skyline training hikes, this is the walk for you! This 12 mile Kinder Scout and Mam Tor circular walk starts from Barber Booth car park in Edale and heads up Crowden Clough onto Kinder Scout. The route then explores the southern edge of Kinder Scout, with stunning views over Edale itself, and heads around to Brown Knoll and Rushup Edge. It then visits the ever-popular Mam Tor before dropping back down into Edale.

One of my oldest friends is walking the Edale Skyline for charity this year. This Kinder Scout and Mam Tor walk takes in a large section of the route so makes a perfect Edale Skyline training walk. We picked a misty, murky day for the hike so the photos aren’t amazing unfortunately!

We headed out on Easter Sunday, having left our kids scoffing chocolate at home. We parked at the small car park at Barber Booth (which is now a pay and display car park) and set off up the road towards Upper Booth and the camp site. Passing the campsite entrance, where there’s an old red telephone box, we crossed the bridge over the River Noe and, using a small wooden gate, followed a muddy track north through the woods.

The path winds it’s way over stiles into fields and over stiles back out of the fields, passing an old stone barn on the way before reaching a footbridge over the River Noe. Over the bridge, there’s a small wooden gate, and then a short distance afterwards is a larger gate leading to the Open Access Land beyond. From here you should be able to see a lovely little waterfall set down from the path. If you decide to visit, be careful with the descent as it’s quite slippery sometimes and remember to leave no trace – take away any rubbish so the area remains beautiful.

The path up Crowden Clough is quite scrambly in places and there’s a fair bit of jumping over stepping stones and cross-crossing the Clough to find the best way up. After about 1km the path starts to move away from the stream bed and climbs sharply up for around 200m before turning sharply right (where thankfully the climb becomes slightly less steep!). You can continue on scrambling up the clough as we did on this walk: Crowden Clough to Kinder Scout Walk. After a short distance the path then turns to the left (heading north) and joins the main path running around the edge of Kinder Scout near Crowden Tower.

After about 500m the path runs through the Wool Packs, an area of stunning gritstone outcrops and mysterious rock formations – and bogs. LOTS of bogs. This part of the plateau gets very boggy over winter and you might have to leave the path to wind around the bogs, which can be very deep in places.

Bogs at the beautiful Wool Packs on Kinder…!

After passing through the Wool Packs, only picking up one muddy knee as we clambered about dodging the bogs, we walked for about 750m east passing Noe Stool, the brilliant huge rock with great views down over the valley (on a clear day!). There’s a fork in the path and we took the fainter path heading east to the Kinder Low trig point at 633m. A lot of people use this as the summit of Kinder Scout as the true summit is slightly underwhelming.

Kinder Low trig point on Kinder Scout

From the trig point we headed south-west and then down the Swine’s Back towards the Edale Cross, an ancient waymarker. After having a nosy at the Cross we went east, heading towards the start of Jacob’s Ladder, but after 300m ish we climbed the stile and set off south along the paved path towards Brown Knoll. Brown Knoll trig point sits on a little island at 569m above sea level and has stunning views over the vast moorland to one side and the Great Ridge of Mam Tor, Back Tor and Lose Hill to the other. Just not when we went!

Brown Knoll trig point

From the trig point we carried on the paved path over the moors before picking up a sandy track called Chapel Gate. At the junction, we turned left to head north east along Rushup Edge.

After 1.5km we reached the summit of Lord’s Seat, an ancient burial cairn at 550m above sea level and a place which is very underrated – it has stunning views down over Edale and is just across from Mam Tor, so gets the same beautiful sunrises. From here we followed the path down to the road and then started to walk up the steps to the Mam Tor summit. This was predictably the busiest place on our walk – the trig point was packed!

People enjoying the wind on Mam Tor

We followed the Great Ridge path along to Hollins Cross, where there is a round stone monument, and then headed downhill through some of the muddiest fields ever. The path follows a series of footpaths through fields and crosses the railway line 3 times (once via a tunnel and twice via bridge) before returning back to the car park at Barber Booth.

Full disclosure: This is the walk we SHOULD have done – in actual fact we left the route plan when we hit Edale, went to the loos and then hiked back to the cars along the road! I was also in charge of navigation for the day, and was so busy chatting I didn’t notice that we had started hiking up Jacob’s Ladder rather than the path to Crowden Clough for about a mile! We had to retrace our steps and pick up the right route – it made for good training for the distance, anyway!