Distance: 14.4 miles

Difficulty of the terrain: hard

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

Walk from Glossop Railway Station, up the Doctor’s Gate Pass, to the head of Snake Pass, then up and along the western edge of Kinder Scout before descending to the village of Hayfield.

The Story

The Route

Getting Back

Gateway to Kinder Scout

While situated a little way south and east of most of the towns in the group, Hayfield is part of a little knott of northwest Derbyshire towns including Hadfield, Glossop and New Mills situated just outside the Peak District National Park, hard on the boundary with Greater Manchester. For this reason perhaps even more so than elsewhere in Derbyshire’s High Peak District, Hayfield and its neighbours can be described as both Midlands and Northern. Not least because unlike most of Derbyshire to the south and east, due to the high moorland plateaus above the village serving as the watershed between the Trent and Mersey, Hayfield is in the catchment areas of the Mersey flowing into the Irish Sea rather than the Trent flowing north towards the Humber.

Hayfield is smaller than its near neighbours, with a population of around 2,700, making it a large albeit distended village rather than a town. It is also quite separate from the other settlements to its north and west, being far further east into the Peak District. Hayfield is the settlement nearest to the dramatic Kinder Scout, Derbyshire and the eastern Midland’s highest summit, standing 636 metres above sea level at its highest point. 

Arguably the Kinder Scout plateau has shaped the entire Peak District, potentially even giving the region its name, Kinder Scout having been known during the mid-medieval period as “The Peak”. In time giving the whole upland area at the base of the Pennines its name.

The village’s proximity to Kinder Scout has shaped it throughout its history. The plateau’s geography has shaped the village in numerous other ways. Prior to the construction of Kinder Reservoir which supplies near Stockport with water in the early 20th Century Hayfield often when water cascaded down the River Kinder towards the village. To this day there is a meadow, now sports fields, in the middle of the village around which it is arrayed on higher land, which is leftover from when the land was sometimes inundated.

Hayfield has also been shaped by people’s desire to cross the Peak District the village having been a stopping point on the Roman road between Buxton and Glossop, as well as the later packhorse route up and over the southern end of the Kinder Scout plateau and down Jacob’s Ladder to Edale. 

Later during the later 18th and early 19th Century several powered spinning mills were erected in Hayfield to take advantage of the shear power of the local rivers and streams. In 1868 a railway branch line from New Mills to Hayfield opened. This encouraged both affluent visitors to come and shoot on the grouse estates that developed on the moors including Kinder Scout, as well as ramblers to visit from Manchester and other nearby towns and cities. In 1896 the Peak and Northern Footpath Society’s first success was at Hayfield with their campaign to open the Snake Path from Hayfield, up William Clough to the northern edge of the KInder Scout plateau and down to the Snake Inn following the line of the River Ashop, concluding with a permanent right of way opening.

With this heritage and Hayfield having become a major centre for walkers, with several thousand ramblers thought to descend upon the village at weekends during the 1920s, it is little surprise that Hayfield was the major location from which the Kinder Scout Mass Trespassers in April 1932 ascended to the plateau. Several commemorative plaques and memorial events take place throughout the year. These days even the National Trust who have owned Kinder Scout since the 1980s and manage it as a nature reserve promote a Kinder Scout Mass Trespasser’s walk.

Since 1951 when the Peak District became the UK’s first national park Hayfield has stood just outside its boundaries but has been surrounded by it on three sides. The town’s branch line from New Mills closed in 1970, with the track lifted and transformed into the Sett Valley Trail, a multi use path following the course of the River Sett which the Kinder joins just west of Hayfield. These days the town’s former railway station is now a bus station, a surprisingly well connected hub for people coming to and from the village, which has a lot of shops, pubs and restaurants for a relatively small rural community.

Routes Notes

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

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This walk from Glossop to Hayfield up the Doctor’s Gate path and along the Pennine Way up and over Kinder Scout begins from Glossop Railway Station.

Upon exiting the station turn right and follow the A624 slightly uphill out of Glossop.

Presently you turn towards Old Glossop, the heart of the original settlement when Glossop was a Peak District village, prior to it becoming a major mill town, arrayed around the parish church and a couple of old pubs.

Then approach the track to Doctor’s Gate reaching the edge of the town past the Howmet Aerospace and Firth Rixson Metals factories. 

The path then runs along a track, imperceptibly entering the Peak District National Park, past a few scattered farms and cottages.

At Mossy Lea Farm the track runs uphill and soon you reach the path on the right running towards the base of Doctor’s Gate.

This is a popular route to accessing the gritstone plateaus of Bleaklow and Kinder Scout and the moorland around them so the path is quite worn out.

Steadily ascending you clamber steadily up the path towards the summit. In Roman times it was thought that Doctor’s Gate was once a Roman road. This is now not considered likely by archeologists, but due to the relatively easy, albeit lengthy, ascent up and over the hills it is likely that people have been using Doctor’s Gate for millenia.

Eventually you reach the summit and soon pick up the Pennine Way turning right to approach the wide distant peak of Kinder Scout.

You reach and cross the infamous, much subject to landslides, A57 Snake Pass road, which winds up from Glossop and then descends down Snake Pass following the line of the River Ashop into the heart of the Peak District.

On the far side of the A57 you enter the National Trust’s Kinder Scout estate crossing a wide swathe of peaty moss, right on the watershed between the Trent and the Mersey approaching Kinder Scout.

As you walk much of the route is flagstoned with great chunks of rock placed there for the convenience of walkers on the Pennine Way. Purportedly these flagstones are taken from disused mills across the north of England where they once formed the floors.

Eventually you cross the Snake Path, created back in the 1890s by the Peak and Northern Footpath Society, as their first successful project, which stands at the top of William Clough. Before ascending a steep flight of steps to Kinder Scout.

On top of Kinder Scout there are spectacular views to the west, straight ahead and behind you, both towards the urban heart of Manchester, and to peaks across western north and central England.

The landscape of gritstone boulders, rock formations and peat is wonderfully weird and distinctive. No wonder that it is thought that Kinder Scout was a holy place in prehistory. The glitter-like glimmer of the sand in the gristone, the remains of sediments from hundreds of millions of years ago, only heightens the effect.

Keep on following the clearly worn path around the edge of the plateau. It is very well worn, so easy to follow.

Along the way you cross the stream channel flowing towards the Kinder Downfall waterfall, birthplace of the River Kinder, flowing down towards the reservoir far below. Almost at the southern end of the plateau you pass Kinder Low Trigpoint, not quite the highest point on the mountain (at 636 metres above sea level Kinder Scout just about counts as a mountain), but typically where people pose for photographs because the actual highest point is an obscure tuft far side the plateau’s peaty interior.

Past Kinder Low Trigpoint you begin descending, amidst spectacular views across the Peak District towards Jacob’s Ladder which leads down to Edale.

Here, instead of heading down into the Vale of Edale to the left, you turn right, picking up a bridleway, part of the ancient packhorse route from Hayfield around the southern edge of Kinder Scout and down towards Edale.

The old packhorse route runs straight down the hill. It is very steep in places.

At the very base of Kinder Scout you turn right picking up a farm track running to opposite Bowden Bridge Quarry where the main group of Mass Trespassers gathered in April 1932. There is an impressive memorial plaque in the quarry wall placed there in 1982 on the 50th anniversary of the trespass.

On reaching the side of the River Kinder turn left, following a path through a campsite, and then straight down a riverside path to the edge of Hayfield.

Walk through the village’s outskirts to reach the main road running into the centre.

Upon reaching the centre to get to the bus station turn left at a passageway past Hayfield’s gaunt tall towered Anglican church.

Crossing over an unusual horse friendly traffic light crossing you reach the bus station on the site of Hayfield’s old railway station.

This is where the walk ends.

Getting Back

Due to its popularity with walkers and others engaged in outdoor pursuits, as well as its situation on the A-road between Buxton and Glossop, Hayfield is well served by buses. There are frequent services throughout the day on weekdays and Saturdays south to Glossop and west to New Mills both of which have railway stations with trains west to Manchester and in New Mills’ case east to Sheffield. Other buses run towards Buxton and Macclesfields, as well as, as far as the West Coast Mainline railway station at Stockport.