A pleasant circular stroll from Crowden in Longdendale. Be suprised how isolated you can feel within a few miles of Manchester !

• Distance 13.7 kilometres
• Terrain - much of the path is well made BUT as with any other hill in the Dark Peak, Black Hill itself is a large area of rough peat. Avoid when wet, and for preference, save this walk for a dry summer or freezing winter day
• Map - Explorer (Outdoor Leisure ) 1

Click on this image to order the map for this walk direct from the Ordnance Survey

1 - from the Car Park at 072994, take the footpath at the west end of the carpark towards the toilet block and go right up the path, then left in front of the large farm buildings. As the tarmacced track climbs, take the track off to the right signposted 'Pennine Way'. When after a few hundred yards you come to a small plantation of trees on the right and another path crosses yours, carry straight on. This brings you out on to a shoulder of the valley, with Crowden Great Brook below you to the right, and Black Tor and Rakes Rocks above you to the left. The open path ascends, and is surfaced with stone flags in places, such as the approach to Oaken Clough. Eventually, you reach the top of the valley wall, with the valley itself dropping away steeply on one side, and the path, being heavily used, becomes a narrow trench in the peat in some places

2 - roughly level with the 'castles' on the map (actually just rock outcrops) the path starts to descend as the valley floor rises and the valley opens out. Keep the brook to your right and cross several tributaries coming from your left. After a while, the path is once again surfaced with stone flags, which take you all the way to the trig point at Black Hill

The summit of Black Hill with the Trig point in the background. Note the handiwork of the footpath fairies, and the fact that either side of the flagstones is peat. Note also that from here back to Crowden, the path goes through access land, which may not be open in the grouse shooting season

3 - from the trig point, because of the peat nature of the summit, there is no obvious path in our direction. However, if you take the bearing of the path on the map and follow that bearing, you will after a few hundred yards come across a stile over a fence (which on a good day is just visible from the trig point). Cross the stile and carry on on the same bearing and you may see traces of an indistinct path in places as you cross Tooleyshaw moss and you should, at the end of the moss, come across a six foot tall marker post on the left had side of the path. From here the path bears slightly to the right and descends. Again, as the path crosses White Low and Westend Moss, the path becomes very indistinct and you need to keep your eye on map and compass

4 - Before descending the flank of Westend Moss take time to look down on Hey Moss below and work out your route. The route marked in yellow on the map above was marked as a public footpath on the map I used at the time I walked it, but as the map above shows, public footpaths do get rearranged
As you cross Hey Moss, you can see the track that runs between the two disused quarries just above Crowden, and the path drops down off the right flank of Hey Moss straight in line with this track, which it meets.. Once past the quarries, take the stile on the right of the track, and drop back down to Crowden and the track to the car park

Get a more detailed route from the Download page