Distance: 15.9 miles

Difficulty of the terrain: hard

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

Walk partially along the Pennine Way from Hadfield in Derbyshire at the foot of Longdendale up and over the Black Hill, West Yorkshire’s highest point, to the Holme Valley, and Holmfirth its famous main town.

The Story

Route Notes

Getting Back

More Than Last of the Summer Wine

Holmfirth is both figuratively and literally dominated by television. Its figurative domination extends from the fact that many British people outside of Yorkshire and the Peak District would not have heard of the town if it was not for the long-running BBC comedy show Last of the Summer Wine, which was set there and broadcast annually between 1973 and 2010. The town’s literal domination is thanks to its proximity to the Emley Moor Transmitter, a vast 319 metre tall structure visible from miles around like a televisual late modernist Isengard. Built between 1969 and 1971 the tower’s solid concrete construction was necessitated by its predecessor collapsing during a storm in March 1969. 

This is a shame because there are many reasons to visit Holmfirth besides its now dated television associations. The town is actually part of a tight conurbation of now largely post-industrial towns, villages and hamlets concentrated at the neck of the Holme Valley which runs west from the Black Hill. A 582 metre high gritstone plateau, not unlike the similar but slightly taller Bleaklow and Kinder Scout, located to the south inside Derbyshire. The summits of all three peaks are crowned with thick black peat primarily layed down during the ice age. It is the colour of the peat that gives the Black Hill its foreboding name.

The Black Hill was historically in Cheshire, but these days the county boundary between Derbyshire and West Yorkshire runs through its highest point. This makes its southern and western flanks some of the most northerly points in the contemporary Midlands. From the summit there are commanding views north and east across Yorkshire, as far as Leeds and the Yorkshire Dales on a clear day. While to the south the hills and small mountains of the Peak District stretch as far as the eye can see.

In common with other Pennine parts of Yorkshire the Holme Valley and Holmfirth itself as sparsely populated until the late 18th Century when demand for raw materials, and the desire of early capitalists to use the fall of the fast flowing streams gushing off the Pennines to power water wheels to weave cloth led to rapid urbanisation. These industries typically evaporated on the tide of economic and social change before those situated on flatter ground and in larger settlements further east, so by the mid-20th Century the area was increasingly post-industrial in character.

Today Holmfirth alongside other former mill, market and mining towns amidst or in the shadow of the Peak District, the likes of Leek, Wirksworth and Penistone, is a very desirable place to live. Smart brewery taps, cafes and boutiques lining the town centre, the old terraces running up the hillsides smartly restored and augmented by discreetly solid new houses. Signifiers of the fact that the town these days sits at the heart of the “Yorkshire Rivera” a banana shaped arch of similarly smart former mill towns, once isolated hamlets and hill farms, that stretches from Penistone on the edge of the Peak District to Haworth in the South Pennines. Signs of how the Peak District, a historical subregion almost uniquely divided between Midlands and Northern England, continues to have a distinctive dynamic of its own.

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.

This walk partially along the Pennine Way from Hadfield in Derbyshire up and over the Black Hill, West Yorkshire’s highest point, to the Holme Valley, and Holmfirth its famous main town begins from Hadfield Railway Station.

Upon arrival at Hadfield Station the presence of a rusting, “ghost” gantry or two in some scrubland, betrays that this little branch line was once a busy mainline between Manchester and Sheffield, and the first in the UK to be electrified.

Exit the station to the left and cross the forecourt.

This takes you onto the High Street through Hadfield. If you are a fan of dark, gross late 1990s British TV comedy, this road might look familiar. That is because Hadfield played the role of the bleak, surreal, and often outright disgusting Pennine town of Royston Vassey in the League of Gentlemen.

At the top of the high street turn right.

Walk down the road a short distance until on the left hand side you see the ramp leading up to the start of the Longdendale Trail stretch of the Trans Pennine Trail.

Once on the path turn left and start walking. You follow the trail for around seven or eight miles right the way up Longdendale to Woodhead.

Soon you are out of Hadfield and its outlying villages and hamlets. The Pennines rise increasingly tall on either side, while to your left the valley floor has been flooded to create the “Longdendale Chain” a network of seven reservoirs built between the 1830s and 1884 to supply Manchester and Salford with water.

After a couple of miles along the Longdendale Trail you reach the place where the Pennine Way descends from Bleaklow to reach the Longdendale Trail. Here you turn left, picking up the Pennine Way as it runs down to the side of the reservoirs.

You cross one of the dams that create the Longdendale chain of reservoirs, taking in spectacular views of the valley as you walk.

On the far side you head up to, and cross, the busy A628, one of the main routes between Greater Manchester and South Yorkshire these days. Then you head along a farm track towards the village of Crowden.    

Just before you reach Crowden you head left, following the Pennine Way, off road into the hills.

The Pennine Way is well trodden, and easy to follow. You use it to ascend the clough where the Crowden Brook runs at the bottom.

As you walk steadily climbing you pass the Black Tor, before clambering up a steep section beside Rakes Rocks, Oaken Clough and Laddow Rocks.

Having climbed to over 500 metres above sea level you walk along the Pennine Way following the line of a tall cliff edge high above the wide clough for some distance.

Presently the path reaches the side of the Great Crowden Brook (essentially the same river as the Crowden Brook but higher up in the moors), and you follow the stream for a bit, occasionally crossing it here and there.

Then you leave the side of the stream and begin walking up a flagstoned part of the Pennine Way across the peat towards the summit of the Black Hill.

Steadily ascending the hill you eventually reach the trig point at Black Hill’s summit, which stands right on the county boundary between Derbyshire and West Yorkshire (as well as being at 582 metres above sea level the highest point in West Yorkshire), and the boundary between the Midlands and Yorkshire.

Passing the trig point you start descending a steep, but really very straight, section of the Pennine Way across the moors.

As you descend the Pennine Way from the summit the expanse of the Holme Valley extending north towards the gaunt Emley Moor Transmitter jutting into the sky opens up to your right. On a clear day the blur of Holmfirth can be glimpsed from here. 

Look out on the right for a well trodden path down the side of the Black Hill towards the floor of the Holme Valley which is located next to a wooden signboard erected by the Peak District National Park Authority. Follow it down to the side of a stream which you cross.

Once over the stream pick up a farm track which you follow all the way to the village of Holme which sits just outside the national park at the top of the valley surrounded by the Black Hill massif on either side.

Walk through the village and pick up a path descending to the Brownhill and Ramsden Reservoirs. This stretch of the walk is along the course of the Peak District Boundary Walk which hugs the circumference of the National Park as closely as possible.

You walk through woodland and cross the dam which divides the two reservoirs.

On the far side you head uphill along a forestry road which twists around on the edge of a pine plantation and open moorland.

Soon you pick up a long, fairly straight track called the Ramsden Road.

Nearing a larger forestry plantation you cross a public road called White Gate Road, a mere stonesthrow from the Borough of Kirklees where Holmfirth sits, with Barnsley.

On the far side you turn left down another wide track known as Cartworth Moor Road, after the name of the area you are traversing, passing a series of farm gates, on a steady descent towards Holmfirth.

Now above the town the track curves around sharply, before running down to reach a public road.

Once on the road, taking care, as it can be very busy, follow it all the way down to the valley floor where you reach the centre of Holmfirth.

This is where the walk ends.

Getting Back

The nearest station to Holmfirth town centre is at Brockholes just over two miles to the north, but easily reached along main roads. There are hourly trains from Brockholes north towards nearby Huddersfield which is on the main line between Manchester and Leeds, and Sheffield to the south, via Penistone. There are also several frequent bus services from Holmfrith which run to Huddersfield bus station which is very close to the town’s rail station. There are also buses which run to smaller towns and outlying villages throughout the day.