Last week I took my mum out for a wander. She said she wanted to go somewhere flat-ish, so I had to find somewhere. After lots of searching on the OS map I thought Stanage Edge looked about right. The only thing we had to be aware of was time. ( I had to drop my little lad off at school, pick up mum, go to where ever, walk, walk back, drive back, drop off mum and pick up Ben by 3pm)... The plan was to leave the car park, go to the res, up past Stanage Pole and back along the cliff tops. The first problem was that my mum has some light walking gear, but no proper boots. as we crossed the road and looked in the direction of the brook it was way too damp for her footwear.
So we became Ramblers for the day and made our route up as we went along (keeping a close eye on the map.. just in case). We walked along the gravel path, then turned right into the heather and went around the larger boulders right at the end. (If you're about to start ranting, we were careful to follow sheep tracks and do no damage).
We followed the cliff tops until we were not far from the pole when we decided to scramble down a cutting in the cliff and down into a small wooded area. We found 2 boulders just right for seats and I unpacked the gear for dinner..
(At this point I should note, that I knew this would not be - no offence mum, not a very strenuous walk and so I had loaded up the pack with all sorts of kit to test and Included stuff I would never normally take to add some weight.. I had nearly filled my 35 ltr pack :)
So we had Freshly cooked French onion soup with ciabatta bread, eaten from a hiking table.. hehe.
After sitting around for a bit, we set off to walk back along the bottom of the cliff to go back to the car.
Seconds later it became apparent that this way was going to take much longer and so we had to scramble back up the cliff, so we could walk back along the top. This worked fine and got us back with time to spare to pick up my son..
It was a good day out in the end and as always, as we started to get back to civilisation, The sun came out....
