THE PEAK DISTRICT BOUNDARY WALK – report by Hilary Kendall
Whilst out walking in the Peak District most of us will have noticed these discs attached to stiles and signposts. They are the waymarks for the Peak District Boundary Walk, a circular walk of around 190 miles which keeps as close as possible to the edges of the National Park. It was devised by the Friends of the Peak District and officially inaugurated on June 17, 2017. There is a guidebook describing the route which for convenience has been split into 20 stages averaging about 10 miles per stage and the route description starts from Buxton.
Before the official Grand Opening the Friends of the Peak District advertised for volunteers to walk a stage of the route on the inauguration day with the intention that the entire route would be walked on that day! Ray and I received an email from Marple District Rambling Club informing us that MDRC had volunteered to walk Stage 19, the penultimate stage from Bollington to Whaley Bridge. We asked for our names to be added to the list of walkers but later found that only one other person had responded! However, he brought along a friend so on a glorious hot day the four of us were waved off by the wife of the licensee of the Spinner’s Arms in Bollington at 10.00am and welcomed to Whaley Bridge at the Goyt Inn at 3.00pm by one of the local councillors.
The entire route can be walked as a long distance challenge walk with overnight stops (Contours Walking Holidays can arrange packages of 10, 12 or 15 days of walking) or one can pick and select individual stages as required.
Ray and I have just finished walking it stage by stage but mainly trying to keep to the correct order. In 2017 we walked Stages 19&20, in 2018 Stages 1&2 but this year we became seriously “hooked” and have completed the remaining 16 stages in the past 3 months . (Walking it this way had the big advantage of choosing to walk on days when the weather forecast was good!)
The logistics of planning the walk were probably more challenging than the walk itself as the beginning and end of very few sections can be connected by public transport. We managed to walk the entire route without any third party back-up. 16 sections were completed entirely by public transport. We used a car to drive to the end points of three sections and then used either Derbyshire or Moorlands Connect to take us to the beginning of these sections. We could not have finished the route without these brilliant bus companies which provide pre- bookable transport to and from places where no regular public transport is available. On the remaining section Derbyshire Connect collected us from a completely inaccessible place and transported us to somewhere from where we could get public transport back to our car. We also had a couple of overnight stops (between Stages 7 & 8 and between Stages 10 & 11). Although the route is officially 189 miles, by the time we had added on distances to and from buses, trains and accommodation, we had clocked up 233 miles.
Whilst most of us associate the Peak District with Derbyshire, much of the route is in Cheshire, Staffordshire, Yorkshire and even Greater Manchester as well as Derbyshire, with all areas having their own characteristics. I have been amazed by the diversity of scenery; exposed moorland, woodland paths, dramatic edges, cloughs, lakes &reservoirs, beautiful dales and pastures. Each day of walking is different and within each stage there is varied terrain. Although I have walked regularly in the Peak District for about 40 years I found beautiful paths I had never walked before and others that I had rarely walked. There is a good mix of the familiar and the unknown.
This is a walk I can thoroughly recommend.