Country:
District:
Start: The Bulls Head, 78 Old Road, Tintwistle, Glossop, Derbyshire SK13 1JY
Tel: 01457 853365
(S/E) From the front door of The Bulls Head, turn left past Stocks Brow and the war memorial, then turn right into Arnfield Lane. At the junction with Crossgate Lane, continue straight on past a covered reservoir on your left.
(1) Turn right along a track immediately after a farm and before the drop to Arnfield Brook. Follow the track into open country and through a belt of conifers and beyond. When the track fizzles out, continue along a narrower path, climbing to pass a small disused reservoir with the remains of a piped aqueduct.
(2) Climb the shoulder of the hill, following a path in a slight dip to a stile. Follow the path beyond along a fence. At a vague cairn, the main route turns right to continue along the fence.
(3) To visit the aircraft wreck, which is in trackless heather and not easy to find, leave the fence, initially following the obvious path, then take a less prominent path through the heather on the left, aiming for the brow of the hill slightly to your left. The aircraft remains are about 100 m beyond the most prominent rock outcrop. Return via the same route and turn left at the fence. Follow the fence through sometimes boggy peat and above a quarry face to a step stile and ladder stile either side of a small stream. (A) Turn right here for a quick way back to Tintwistle.
(4) Walk past the first stile then, just before the stream, leave the fence on a path to the left that shortly crosses over and then heads half-right obliquely up the slope towards the end of a low rocky ridge on the skyline. This path skirts round the rocky shoulder above Lad’s Leap before dropping to cross the stream.
(5) After climbing the far slope, a couple of cairns lead you to a broken wall, which you follow left and downhill. As you approach Crowden, the path steepens and winds downhill to meet the Pennine Way by a stone monument to one Harry Phillips.
(6) Go straight across the Pennine Way and carry on steeply down the slope to reach the Crowden Outdoor Education Centre. Cross the bridge and follow the drive round to the right to meet another road. Take a walled way opposite and to the left of the caravan park to pass some public toilets and emerge between houses onto the main road.
(7) Cross over and turn left along the pavement for a short distance, before turning right onto the Torside Concessionary Path. Ignore the path to Woodhead Dam on your left and swing right when you meet the reservoir, shortly crossing the end of Crowden Brook.
(8) Follow the path beyond, which is joined from the right by a stone-lined water channel. Cross this channel via a footbridge into Tinsel School Wood and climb to a bench before swinging left. At the far end of the trees, turn left towards Torside Dam, then turn immediately right along a track that runs behind a house.
(9) At the junction, take the lower of the two gates opposite and follow the wide track above Rhodeswood Reservoir for nearly a mile to the next dam. Turn left over the spillway, then right through stone gate-piers before the dam proper.
(10) A descending flight of concrete steps on the hairpin bend cuts the corner to the continuing reservoir road, where you turn right and recross the spillway. Pass another house and continue alongside Valehouse Reservoir for a further mile.
(11) Beyond Valehouse Dam, keep right up the service road, passing a quarry face on your right and then the water treatment works on your left, to reach the main road. Cross quickly and carefully into Chapel Brow and climb the hill; at the top, turn left to return to The Bulls Head.
Association or club
Easy 
Walker
Moderate 
