This weekend I went on day trips to the Peak District for climbing and walking.
Saturday
I picked up the car on Saturday morning, I had to wait a bit so arrived at Ben’s a little later than expected, we then headed to campus to pick up the third person. After four unanswered calls and waiting for a while,we gave up and went to pick up Jack.
We arrived at the Hathersage and picked up some tickets for the free talks by Tin Nicholl and Ian Parnells at Outside Café that evening. We then drove to Stanage Popular and met Alex.
Stanage Edge is the greatest of the gritstone crags with more than 4 km of exposed rock and over 1300 recorded routes. Stanage is the most climbed crag in the UK and the Popular end has a well earned name. The high friction offered by gristone is famous amongst climbers. The BMC have produced an excellent ZoomTopo for Stanage Edge, it is a super high resolution (8,000 megapixel) interactive image with the option to overlay routes.
The weather forecast was for strong winds which was true at the top but it was sunny and almost summer weather sheltered at the base of the crag. We had a good day on the grit before Alex left and I took Ben and Jack to see the evening talks.
Sunday
On Sunday we managed to set off earlier but as we approached Hathersage it was raining, we went to Outside to see if the weather would blow over. When we left the cafe after a warm drink, it was raining even more, so we went with ‘Plan B’ a walk along the top of Stanage Edge, that way we would still be close if the weather improved. We parked up at Hooks Carr and had some lunch before walking along the top to Stanage End. On the way back we walked below the crag until past High Neb. Here we met Ollie out for a run, after parting we went back up and along the path at the top all the way to the end of the edge, (10.5 km round trip). It had stopped raining and the sun has started to break through, the rock had quickly dried in the wind and so we went back to the car and collected our climbing gear. We could see Ollie on the road so invited him to join us. There were very few people at the crag, although no longer raining it was much colder than the day before, we managed a lead each before heading back to Nottingham.
