Several miles and a two or three hours walking north of Kinder Scout, Bleaklow is another of the Dark Peak’s imposing gritstone and peat plateaus.
Standing 633 metres above sea level at its highest point, Bleaklow is only three metres shorter than Kinder Scout, making it Derbyshire and the eastern Midland’s second highest peak. One of the few in the Midlands region that truly qualifies as a mountain.
From the boggy, peaty summit, it could be argued that Bleaklow truly lives up to its name. However, there is a definite austere grandeur to it. The views – if visited on a clear day- up and down the Pennine range, right across the Peak District as far south as the Hope Valley and north towards Saddleworth Moor and Holme Moss, as well as across Greater Manchester to the west, are spectacular.
Something which undoubtedly should belong to everyone. Perhaps why the small-scale trespass which preceded the Kinder Scout Mass Trespass of 1932 occurred on Bleaklow’s slopes.
Also of note on Bleaklow, besides the mournful remains of a United States Air Force “Superfortress” which crashed into the mountain in 1948 with the loss of all hands, are Bleaklow Stones. These rocks are the most easterly point in the UK above 610 metres (the official designation of a mountain).
When I visited in April 2023 I reached Bleaklow from Glossop. Up the twisty, but relatively gentle in the main, Doctor’s Gate Path. Excitable Victorian antiquities and historians reckoned it was a Roman road leading to a nearby fort. However, while Doctor’s Gate has doubtless been a handy way up the unforgiving wall of the Pennines in this part of northern Derbyshire for countless generations of homosapiens, there is no evidence that it has ever been anything grander than a packhorse route.
Bleaklow can also be accessed from Snake Pass a couple of miles south and from Edale and Hayfield, if going via Kinder Scout and then the Pennine Way. The Pennine Way handily runs right across the summit of Bleaklow prior to the long descent down to Longdendale.