Although I've visited Hayfield many times over the years and enjoyed its charming buildings and fine selection of ale houses, I have to admit that in terms of hill-walking I've always thought of it as a gateway to Kinder Scout and not really considered what else it has to offer. Thankfully, my eyes were opened this summer when I had a spare half-day to go for a hike, slap bang in the middle of what had been excitedly trending on Twitter as #heatwaveuk.
(For anyone reading this from outside the UK, a heatwave in Britain is usually a comically short length of time with fairly regular sunshine and what would be considered mild-to-normal summertime temperatures anywhere else in our planet's temperate zones.)
Wanting to find somewhere new to walk that was close by before the skies clouded over and the drizzle recommenced, I recalled the hills we'd so often seen from the road between Glossop and Hayfield. Opening up OS Maps, I rattled out a circular route up onto them from the Sett Valley Trail, which begins (or ends, depending on your perspective) by Hayfield's bus station, and set off to explore.
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| The Sett Valley Trail. |
Wanting to find somewhere new to walk that was close by before the skies clouded over and the drizzle recommenced, I recalled the hills we'd so often seen from the road between Glossop and Hayfield. Opening up OS Maps, I rattled out a circular route up onto them from the Sett Valley Trail, which begins (or ends, depending on your perspective) by Hayfield's bus station, and set off to explore.
