Distance: just over 6 miles

Difficulty of the terrain: medium

Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. file from Dropbox

Valley floor walk in the fringes of the Peak District. Initially along the famously beautiful Peak Forest Canal, then tracing the route of the pioneering Peak Forest Tramway.

The Story

The Walk

Getting Back

A Very Midlands Precusor to the Railways

If you were to ask most people where the railway network was born, if they thought beyond the first intercity mainline between Liverpool and Manchester, then they’d probably point to County Durham and Northumberland in the 1820s.

It was in these two counties in North Eastern England, that a local tradition of DIY steam powered locomotives on wheels, augmenting horse and pony power on colliery tramways, first evolved into a significant form of transport for goods and people alike.

Whilst the North East had the technical knowhow and a ready supply of fuel to make steam railways a reality, the use of tracks and carts for moving large quantities of heavy goods long distances was not unique to the region. Rather the technology had been widespread across coal mining and other mineral extracting regions of the UK since the Early Modern period.

By the early 19th Century miners and quarry workers had been loading the rocks and minerals they hewed out of the earth onto horse, pony and human hauled trucks running on trackways for generations. Such constructions were easier in hilly regions with potentially porous geology, than the expense of digging and cantilevering canals for the purpose of bulk transporting mining’s wears. They also had the advantage in a business where workings often remained small and short lived, as the technology for sustained extraction of rocks and ores was either unknown or uneconomical, of being easy to relay and redirect when mining or quarrying moved onto the next seam.

Some of the most impressive tramways were in the Midlands in Derbyshire and north easterly bits of Staffordshire serving limestone quarries in the White Peak.

Amongst the longest of these pre-steam railways was the Peak Forest Tramway opened in 1796. This took limestone from the quarries at Dove Holes (which operate to this day) to the base of the Peak Forest Canal at the village of Buxworth (historically Bugsworth until an early 20th Century campaign by snobbish village “leaders” lead to a name change to mirror the nearby spa town of Buxton).

Benjamin Outram a Derbyshire native and the Peak Forest Canal’s chief engineer decided that rather than extending the canal across the porous limestone, steepy craggy hills of the southern Peak District, it would instead make sense to run a tramway the 7 or so miles from Buxworth to the quarry. The solution was to construct a horse drawn tramway from the quarry to the start of the canal.

Bugsworth Basin, which fully opened in 1800 and was extended throughout the 19th Century rapidly became the busiest inland port on the UK’s narrow canal network. Limestone quarried at Dove Holes was loaded onto carts on rails, formed into horse drawn trains, and hauled along the tracks to Bugsworth Basin.

There it was tipped onto barges which took the limestone up the Peak Forest Canal to the burgeoning industries and swelling towns and cities of North Western England. This trade – which benefited at a time when the railways began displacing the canals for carrying other kinds of goods from being a relatively un time critical product which suited the steady, reliable nature of water carriage – kept on going strong into the 20th Century.

Bugsworth Basin’s busiest years were those around the turn of the 20th Century as Dove Holes limestone freighted down the Peak Forest Tramway for shipment up the Peak Forest Canal to Greater Manchester and beyond, fed the burgeoning chemical industry that underlay the second industrial revolution. It was not to last however, with both the Peak Forest Tramway and Bugsworth Basin closing in 1925.

Bugsworth Basin was slowly restored, along with the rest of the southern section of the Peak Forest Canal, between 1968 and 2005. Meanwhile the Peak Forest Tramway also lay abandoned. The restoration of Bugsworth Basin and a growing sense of the Tramways own historic significance, led Derbyshire County Council, High Peak Borough Council, and others, to take steps to construct a cycling and walking route along the line of the former proto-railway.

In this sense, the route of the old Peak Forest Tramway, at least between Bugsworth Basin and Chapel-en-le-Frith (just before the route gets really hilly) remains a mode of transport for residents and visitors to the towns and villages clustered north of Buxton to this day.

The Walk

Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. file from Dropbox

I create the Walk Midlands routes via Ordnance Survey Maps Explorer enabling me to take them on my phone. Subscribe yourself via the banner above.

From New Mills Newtown Railway Station (the outline of an alternative route to the Peak Forest Canal towpath from New Mills Central can be found here) head out into the carpark.

Walk across the carpark heading for the main road leading into the town.

Once you reach the road turn right.

Follow the road downhill. You approach an old mill which is still very much in industrial use as a factory for Swizzels Matlow a sweet maker whose brands include: Love Hearts, Parma Violets and Drumstick lollies.

Just before you pass the sweet factory you cross a bridge over the Peak Forest Canal.

Rounding a corner beside the sweet factory you approach the turn off for the towpath.

Soon you come to a narrow side road running off to your right.

Take a sharp turn, head down this road and walk along a short distance.

It leads out onto the Peak Forest Canal towpath opposite a small marina.

Here, turn left and start walking along the towpath.

The southern section of the Peak Forest Canal from the aqueduct at Marple is famously one of the most beautiful in the UK. It runs through a bucolic, increasingly hill landscape on the edge of the Peak District, between a series of little towns and villages formed during the industrial revolution. These days they are in fashion as places to move to from Manchester and the other inner Metropolitan Boroughs of Greater Manchester, as they become increasingly unaffordable.

You walk through this landscape for a couple of miles. In addition to the outflow from Manchester to live in houses and flats in places like New Mills, Furness Vale and Whaley Bridge, there are clearly a great many people living in narrowboats along the attractive waterway.

After walking steadily along the towpath you approach Bugsworth Basin at a canal junction where a very short arm heads off towards the centre of Whaley Bridge to the right.

Whilst the main line of the Peak Forest Canal continues to the left.

Bugsworth Basin is a long, but relatively narrow site.

Near its entrance stands a bridge across the waterway, and not far beyond that there is a floating cafe in a narrowboat.

At this point you can either cross the bridge to see a replica Peak Forest Tramway wagon on a small section of track, or continue up past the cafe towards a road.

Halfway up the basin there is a public road. This runs too and from the village of Buxworth. Turn right here and cross over a bridge spanning the canal.

On the far side of the bridge on your left there is a flight of steep stone steps running down to a mooring point.

Walk down these steps and walk around the mooring point heading to the left. As you walk you cross what appear to be stone stubs that once held the rails of the Peak Forest Tramway. It was these arms of the network which brought to stone ready for loading to the barges.

Just above the Navigation Inn – the pub serving the basin – head around to the left. This is right at the very top of the basin and the bottom of the Peak Forest Canal.

Ahead of you there stands a signpost. This points towards the start of the Tramway Trail.

The Peak Forest Tramway Trail, waymarked with distinctive purple signs, leads off to the right along a tarmacked path into some woodland.

Turn right and follow this tarmacked path.

After a short distance you pass a weathered arch. Apparently the Tramway once ran along the top of it and the embankment to the sides.

You can scramble a short way up the bank next to it to get onto its level. It’s fairly safe if you exercise due care when climbing up and down the embankment.

After the archway, keep on following the path through the woodland.

Eventually having walked for some time you come to a factory unit constructed alongside the line of the old Tramway.

This industrial unit has a well established pedigree, there having been a factory on the site for over 200 years. It was initially a papermill, and has had other uses over the years, today being Mexichem Specialty Compounds Limited, a polymer maker, continuing the area’s long association with the chemical industry.

After following the line of the former Tramway past the factory complex you come to a road.

Here cross the road heading right and follow the path back into the trees past some fencing and a metal device in place to stop cars and motor powered bikes.

Walk through the trees for some distance.

Presently you come to a further road which you head straight across and continue walking along the line of the former Tramway immediately opposite on the other side.

Keeping going you soon pass a large new estate which is being built on the edge of Chinley. As new estates constructed on the edge of towns go it is not a terrible one. Intelligently the developer has decided to take their inspiration from the 18th and 19th Century terraces in the area and create something relatively human seeing.

Here the path is generally rougher, but still fairly easily followed. There are bits of old concrete (probably not from the Peak Forest Tramway, and some old limestone blocks, which potentially could be) beneath your feet, which it is worth taking care over.

After some distance you pass Chinley’s sewage works on your left. Here you come out onto a tarmacked service road, which you follow for a short distance leading to a main road.

Upon reaching this road turn left.

Walk for a short distance along the road, heading downhill in the direction of a bridge. Take care on this section as it was fairly busy when I walked the route late morning and cars travel quite fast.

Having crossed the bridge on the right hand side there is an old mill building, at least a couple of hundred years old, which has been converted into offices on a small trading estate.

Turn right and walk across the car park of this trading estate, passing a series of modern warehouses.

At the back of the trading estate there is a footpath located to the left of a small modern warehouse.

Head straight ahead along this footpath which leads into a field. The purple waymarks indicate that you are still following the route of the Peak Forest Tramway Trail.

Follow the path across the field as it leads towards the impressive Chapel Milton double viaduct. This carries the railway between Sheffield and Manchester via Edale in the heart of the Peak District National Park, as well as mineral trains serving the modern limestone quarries clustered along the edge of the National Park.

Apparently the Peak Forest Tramway passed beneath the viaducts, which were built more than 60 years after the tramway was layed, once steam powered locomotives were common on the railway network across the country, so you are keeping close to the original route at this point.

Following the path you approach the foot of the viaduct.

Here there is a wooden gate which leads through to the path beneath the bridges.

Follow this path leading to the right around.

Having passed the second viaduct you come to a bridge across a stream which leads to a short path running past cottage gardens.

Passing the cottages you reach a main road.

On the far side slightly to the right there is a country lane. Cross over the road – taking care as it is quite busy – and head along this lane.

After a short distance you pass some workshops and warehouses, housed in a mixture of modern sheds and more very old looking former mill buildings (a testimony to how industrialised this area was from the 18th Century onwards) to your right. Before heading into woodland.

In the woods you pass under a massive concrete road viaduct, a not unattractive structure, carrying the A6 as it runs between Chesterfield and Stockport.

Continuing through the woods along the lane you approach a very derelict building on your right.

Next to it there is a footpath leading through the trees.

Turn right and follow this path.

Presently it leads out beside a main road.

Cross the road and follow a corresponding footpath into the trees on the far side.

This leads to the edge of the woodland and a snicket off to the left running between houses on the edge of Chapel-en-le-Frith.

The snicket leads out onto a modern cul-de-sac housing estate.

Here turn left and follow the pavement a short distance to where the mouth of the cul-de-sac is situated.

Once on the main road turn left and begin walking towards the centre of Chapel-en-le-Frith.

Presently you reach a junction where the road you have been following curves slightly to the left.

Here on the right hand side of the road there is a short side street, called Hayfield Road (after the small town near the foot of Kinder Scout) running towards Chapel-en-le-Frith high street.

Cross the road and turn right along Hayfield Road.

This leads towards Market Street.

Once you reach Market Street turn right and begin walking towards the town centre.

This is where the walk ends.

Getting Back

Chapel-en-le-Frith is served by an hourly rail service from a station right on the very edge of the town (at least a 20 minute walk from the High Street). Trains run south towards Buxton, and north, back through New Mills Newtown to Stockport and Manchester. Apparently the station is so far out due to a tricky gradient alignment (the gradient is one of the most extreme on the UK mainline) needed to get into Buxton. Chapel-en-le-Frith is also served by good buses to destinations across the High Peak District, into the Peak District National Park and locations in Great Manchester, wider Cheshire and Derbyshire alike. Chinley, several miles away, has trains calling at its station on the Manchester to Sheffield line via Edale.