Wild Bank Hill

Description

(D/A) Cross the main road in front of The Waggon and Horses pub and turn right. Turn immediately left into Hobson Moor Road. At the next junction, turn left up the no-through road. At the next junction, bear right into Dewsnap Lane. Pass Dewsnap Farm on your right.

(1) Continue straight on past further houses and pass the entrance to Lumb Farm on your left, keeping straight ahead and ignoring paths and tracks off to either side. After passing Hard Times Farm, the track swings left round a house to a narrow lane.

Turn right and walk down to the end of the road. Beyond a gate marked “Private Road”, continue along the track between converted farm buildings. Just after the next farm, turn left over a stone step stile at Peak & Northern Footpath Society sign no. 198 (“Stalybridge via Shaw Moor”). The path leads between fence and wall and then up the side of a field to the top corner, where it turns left to a stile.

(2) Turn left along the bottom of the next field, then turn right in the bottom corner and walk up towards Moorside Farm. At the top of the field, turn left through a gate in front of the farmhouse. Cross the drive and climb a short flight of stone steps, continuing to a stile onto open moorland. Follow the path to the right, passing a couple of way-mark posts and keeping to the right of a shallow clough (stream valley).

(3) As you approach a drystone wall, cross the stream via a wooden footbridge on your left (if this crossing is inaccessibly boggy you may need to skirt to the right of the head of the stream). Above the footbridge head for a stile in the wall with a footpath fingerpost beyond it.

Walk up the right-hand side of the field beyond, following an obvious track. The track descends to a gate then heads on through the heather, fording the headwaters of Gallows Clough. Beyond a line of pylons a path through the heather to the right cuts the corner to the main path to the Wild Bank summit.

(4) Bear right along the broad track up to the trig point. Having admired the view from the top, turn and retrace your steps, this time ignoring the short cut (now on your left), continuing straight on to a crossroads of ways by a waymark post and a small cairn of stones. Follow the wide descending track ahead of you, passing a pylon to your right.

(5) Shortly before a second pylon, the track swings sharp right and descends to a gate above a junction. Turn left and follow the descending track in the general direction of the masts on Harrop Edge. Keep straight on when another track joins from the right.

(6) At Gallows Clough Farm, bear right down a metalled road. At the bottom, a short cobbled section swings left and emerges on the A6018 opposite The Waggon and Horses. (D/A)