Padley Gorge & Bole Hill

Millstones galore, and a rocky valley to explore.

Technical sheet

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  • Walking
    Activity: Walking
  • ↔
    Distance: 5.72 km
  • ◔
    Calculated time: 2h 00 
  • ▲
    Difficulty: Moderate

  • ⚐
    Return to departure point: Yes
  • ↗
    Vertical gain: + 140 m
  • ↘
    Vertical drop: - 131 m

  • ▲
    Highest point: 317 m
  • ▼
    Lowest point: 170 m

Description de la randonnée

Start: The Millstone Country Inn (S32 1DA) Grid ref. SK 240 807

(S/E) From The Millstone Country Inn front door, cross the main road and turn left. Ignore the first track at the end of the car park, keeping along the main road past the delimit signs.

(1) Take the next right, on a bend, past the National Trust sign for Greenwood Farm. Follow the track, passing millstones left and right, to the farm. Ignore the turning to the right, to pass the farm buildings and a stone trough between millstones built into the wall on your left. Keep along the track, passing to the left of the next farm. Follow the track through open fields until you reach Padley Chapel.

(2) Pass the chapel and walk past a farmhouse then a row of houses to reach Padley Mill on Burbage Brook. Having crossed the bridge over the stream (and visited the café beyond the railway if required) go through a squeeze stile upstream into Padley Gorge.

Follow the path roughly parallel to the stream, passing a stone arch then looking out for a flight of stone steps leading down to a wooden footbridge.

(3) Once over the stream, follow the zigzag path up the steep slope opposite. At the top of the hill, leave the main path along a less obvious path to the right, by a former gunpowder magazine with a semicircular brick vault.

At a double gate below quarry workings, swing left, then climb the bank to a further gate. Turn left in front of a semicircular quarry face and then head right, up a rocky gully to an open brackeny area.

(4) Pass between two quarry holes, then swing left on a mostly level path through birch trees, with a low quarry face to your right.

A well-made stone trough lies abandoned among the trees to the right of the path. The woodland eventually thins and you pass the famous millstones (more accurately “pulp stones”).

(5) At the main road, take the upper and more obvious of two paths opposite, which leads below the rockface of Millstone Edge and passes a number of ruined quarry buildings.

(6) A wall joins from the left, beyond which is the conifer plantation of Whim Wood; just before the end of the wood (before the path reaches open country) turn left and go through a gate into the wood.

Follow the right-hand edge of the wood until you cross a stream and reach a road. Turn left and walk downhill past a covered reservoir on the right until you reach the main road by Whim Cottage.

Turn right down a no-through road which leads parallel to and above the main road past a series of houses. Where the main driveway swings right up to some gates, turn left and then immediately left again to return to The Millstone Country Inn. (S/E)

Waypoints

  1. S/E : km 0 - alt. 234 m - The Millstone Country Inn
  2. 1 : km 0.19 - alt. 243 m - Greenwood Farm
  3. 2 : km 1.99 - alt. 174 m - Padley Chapel - Padley Mill
  4. 3 : km 2.87 - alt. 211 m - Semicircular brick vault
  5. 4 : km 3.4 - alt. 268 m - Two quarry holes
  6. 5 : km 4.3 - alt. 296 m - Millstone Edge
  7. 6 : km 4.8 - alt. 317 m - Conifer plantation of Whim Wood
  8. S/E : km 5.72 - alt. 242 m - The Millstone Country Inn

Practical information

Terrain: Some rocky ground around Padley Gorge and Bolehill.

Facilities: Refreshments and customer toilets at Grindleford Station Café.

More information and PDF of this walk here at Walks From the Door.

The Millstone Country Inn
Sheffield Road, Hathersage,
Derbyshire S32 1DA
Tel: 01433 650258
Website: www.millstoneinn.co.uk
Email: millstonereservations@millstoneinn.co.uk millstoneHathersage

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