The Shivering Mountain

Been on a bit of a hiatus over the holiday season, because I've been so busy travelling up and down the country and enjoying the (fairly good) weather! A large part of my holiday I was in the Peak District, so the next few posts are going to be from there.

On Boxing Day (my birthday), we headed to the Peak District from Macclesfield to Mam Tor. Mam Tor is a fairly massive steep hill near Castleton, which you can see from the top, factory belching smoke included. The path isn't the easiest climb, but it's well maintained by the National Trust, so it's not horrendous. Once you get to the top, there's an awesome view- even with cloud- and a nice long walk along the ridge of hills.

The path from Mam Tor

It gets a bit rougher further along, but even in the mucky damp weather we had, it was alright to climb, and very busy! In good weather, you can see really far, almost to Manchester, but we had low snow clouds for the whole day, so we couldn't see that far.

It took us a couple of hours to work our way along the top of the ridge and down towards Castleton, to the east of Mam Tor. The path down was a bit difficult for us to find, as our map was a little dated. There were some pretty steep bits here and there, and lots of winter mud too, but it was okay with walking boots on!
Castleton is small- we didn't go into it really as our path diverted away along the Odin Sitch river and back towards the hills, but we did find some chickens interested in stealing bits of gingerbread...

We also came across a hare bounding through the fields as we walked through the fields! Too quick to take photos of though, it was off in a flash. Heading back up the hills, we came to one of the most interesting bits of our walk; the A625 road. Now, this might not sound exciting at first mention- after all, how can just an A-road be interesting?

Backstory time! Mam Tor is also called the Shivering Mountain, because of Mam Tor's primarily shale geology. Multiple landslips have occurred over time, causing multiple smaller hills to form on the side of the peak itself. The A625 road was built in the 1800s, but closed in 1979 due to landslips distorting the road beyond safety. Once we got there, it was instantly obvious as to why!

Cross section of part of the old tarmacked road. The drop was a good 5ft down

You can see the effort put into trying to keep the road flat and open, by the multiple levels of tarmac put onto the road! It's ruined now, although a couple of cars did follow us up quite a long way along the driveable part of the road... which was concerning, when you couldn't see the drop in the previous picture until you were literally standing on it!

We didn't stick around for too long, as it was fairly late by the time we got to the road, and the snow clouds were starting to close in more and more. So, these are annoyingly the only two pictures I have! By the time we got back to the car though, it was dark. And, an extra-special birthday surprise, it started to snow when we were walking along the last (driveable) road to the National Trust car park for Mam Tor!

You can find the approximate route for the walk we did on the National Trust's page.