Distance: 9 miles

Difficulty of the terrain: easy

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

Walk along the Manifold Way, a highly significant former light railway route along the River Hamps and River Manifold limestone gorges in the Staffordshire Peak District, from Waterhouses to Hulme End.

The Story

Route Notes

Getting Back

The First Rail Trail?

Running for eight miles from Waterhouses a quarrying village on the southern edge of the Peak District National Park on the main road between Ashbourne and Leek, and Hulme End, a village in the heart of the Staffordshire White Peak, halfway between Warslow and Hartington, the Manifold Trail is somewhat less well known than the Tissington and High Peak Trails in Derbyshire, but is in its own way at least as significant.

The vast majority of the route now comprising the Manifold Way is the trackbed of the former Leek and Manifold Valley Light Railway which was one of the most picturesque routes authorised by parliament following the 1896 law which simplified and regulated the process of establishing narrow gauge railways and tramways in rural areas. The fruit of intensive lobbying and advocacy in the latter part of the 19th Century by enthusiasts for such technology. This led to a brief flourishing of new routes including the tramway from Amblecote to Kinver which was briefly very successful in the early 20th Century, as well as numerous agricultural and quarrying lines in areas like Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire in the eastern part of the Midlands which were previously unserved by railways.

The Leek and Manifold Valley line was approved by parliament in 1898 and opened in 1904. The engineer was Everard Calthrop, a leading narrow gauge railway builder, who also constructed routes in colonised India including the over 200 mile long Barsi Railway. The hope was that the narrow gauge railway along the River Manifold valley would serve the numerous dairy farms along the route swiftly and efficiently taking their milk to Waterhouses where it would be loaded onto a standard gauge line for shipment from Staffordshire to major urban centres as distant as London.

Aspects of this plan worked as intended, however, the milk trade was never that profitable, despite a creamery operating at Ecton operating until 1932 which was served by the railway. The route did become popular with tourists looking to access sites like Thor’s Cave and Wetton Mill along the Manifold Valley which is nicknamed “Staffordshire’s Switzerland”. Between 1905 and 1930 the line had a popular Sunday service which drew visitors on their day off from the Potteries and beyond, which provided a significant chunk of the route’s revenue.

In 1930 a Pathe newsreel crew filmed the route, in an early example of what would now be called “slow cinema”. The title which Pathe chose for the finished film “A Quaint Little Railway” indicates that despite the Manifold Line being barely a quarter of a century old it was already seen as pretty archaic. At its quickest, trains on the line ran at 15 miles per hour, taking roughly 60 minutes to cover the route. A sedate pace which in addition to running restrictions on the light rail track was exacerbated by the twists and turns of the deep limestone river gorge that almost all of the route ran through.

Following the cessation of Sunday services in 1930 and the closure of the Ecton creamery in 1932, alongside the increased shift towards moving milk, as an inherently highly perishable agricultural product by road, the Manifold railway became economically unviable. It closed in 1934, although some station buildings and other structures along the route, including the odd original metal fence post, remain in situ to this day almost a century later.

What is perhaps most remarkable is that farsighted and remarkably modern approach adopted by Staffordshire County Council when the line closed. The council bought the trackbed and preserved most of it, apart from a few short sections including a handy tunnel at Ecton, which were converted into highways, as a cycle track which opened in 1937. The 1930s was the heyday of leisure cycling with thousands of miles of cycle track, now mostly lost, opened by councils across the country, but the Manifold Trail, as well as being a rare survival of this era, is a strikingly early example of a local authority taking a former railway trackbed into a cycle and walking route in this way.

In this regard the Manifold Trail is a prototype and inspiration for the numerous later examples of former railway lines being turned into cycle routes which can be found across the Midlands. Like the High Peak and Tissington Trails which were converted by Derbyshire County Council in the early 1970s after the closure of those lines by British Rail in the 1960s. And the later Brampton Way between Market Harborough and Northampton, bought and turned into a multiuse path by Leicestershire and Northamptonshire Council in the 1980s after the line between the two towns was closed.     

The Walk

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

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This walk in the Staffordshire White Peak along the Manifold Way between Waterhouses and Hulme End begins from the bus stop near Waterhouse’s Ye Olde Crown Inn. This is where the small number of buses between Ashbourne and Leek each day stop.

Upon alighting the bus turn and walk past the pub and Waterhouse’s village shop.

Continue along the road for a little distance until you see signs for cycle hire. Here you head down what looks like a narrow lane on the left, crossing the River Hamps which the Manifold Trail initially follows until it reaches its confluence with the River Manifold.

This is the first part of the Manifold Trail which you follow into the river valley entering the Peak District National Park.

You continue straight along the path, through woodland and pasture, past a smattering of hilltop farms, as the hills steadily become taller on each side.

At Beeston Tor you reach the place where the River Hamps converges with the Manifold, and enter the Manifold Valley.

Crossing a road you enter a deep, relatively narrow limestone gorge, approaching the famed Thor’s Cave.

Past Thor’s Cave you near Wetton Mill. Here there is a short section where the trackbed of the former Manifold Light Railway was taken by Staffordshire County Council’s highway engineers and became a road. Take the quieter left hand branch of the lane, and then cross the river to the right via a footbridge to reach Wetton Mill.

Walk past Wetton Mill along a path to the left and through a farmyard.

You pick up another tarmac section of the Manifold Trail on the left, walking high above the River Manifold.

Soon you reach another lane. Turn left here and pick up a narrow footpath to reach the former railway trackbed once more.

Follow the path for another couple of miles to reach Hulme End and the end of the Manifold Way.

You pass Ecton Hill which from the Bronze Age until the end of 19th Century was a major location for copper mining.

Soon the Manifold valley opens up, reaching the flatter land where Warslow, Hulme End and Hartington lie in the heart of the White Peak.

At the end of the Manifold Trail you reach the former, preserved, terminus station of the Manifold Light Railway at Hulme End.

Taking care, as the road is very busy, to reach the bus stop turn right and head through the village of Hulme End and across the River Manifold to reach The Manifold Inn where the bus stop of the Buxton to Ashbourne route lies.

This is where the walk ends.

Getting Back

At the time of writing in June 2026 the 442 bus served Hulme End throughout the day. Running between Ashbourne and Buxton. There were no buses on Sundays and bank holidays at all, with buses on the other days being roughly two hourly and the final services departing just after 17:30. From Ashbourne it is possible to get a frequent (half hourly at the time of writing in December 2024) bus to either Uttoxeter or Derby where there are trains. While Buxton to the north has services towards New Mills, Stockport and Manchester, which all have regional connections and rail services further afield. Both Ashbourne and Buxton are local bus hubs with services to the surrounding areas.