Edale

The path leaves the village and climbs into peat and sky — this is the first step of the Pennine Way, and the moor ahead makes no promises. Edale sits beneath Kinder Scout, a village defined entirely by the mountains that surround it.

Edale's place at the southern foot of the 268-mile Pennine Way has made it a pilgrimage site for long-distance walkers since the trail opened in 1965 — mile zero is marked at the Old Nag's Head, and the moor takes over from there. Kinder Scout above was the stage for the 1932 Mass Trespass, the act of organised defiance that helped win the right to roam across England's open country; the plateau itself, at 636 metres, is a maze of peat groughs and gritstone edges where the Kinder Downfall waterfall famously blows upward in strong westerlies. Grindsbrook Clough scrambles up a waterfall-streaked ravine straight onto the plateau, and the Hope Valley railway line delivers walkers direct from Manchester and Sheffield — one of the most accessible serious mountain starts in England, the contrast between green dale and dark moor visible from the train window.