England
Mam Tor
The Shivering Mountain — a ridge that crumbles in slow motion above a broken road.
The ridge crumbles in geological slow motion, taking the old road with it, while the path along the summit holds firm above the broken tarmac below. Mam Tor is the Shivering Mountain — a ridge so unstable it destroyed a main road and unsettled a Bronze Age fort, and so compelling it draws walkers who don't mind the ground moving beneath them.
Mam Tor rises to 517 metres above the head of the Hope Valley, its eastern face a stack of landslip scars where alternating shale and gritstone collapse under their own weight. The A625, built across the landslip's toe, was abandoned in 1979 after every repair failed to hold the moving ground — its heaved, fractured tarmac is now a monument to infrastructure defeated by geology, walkable and strangely beautiful. The summit carries one of the highest hillforts in England, its Bronze and Iron Age ramparts still legible under the grass, and the Great Ridge runs from here to Lose Hill above Castleton — exposed, wind-blasted, exhilarating — with Edale one side and the Hope Valley the other. Paragliders launch from the flank in the right winds, and Castleton's show caves below let one circular day cover the Peak District above ground and under it.
Solo
Walk the ridge alone when cloud sits at summit level and the valleys vanish — the broken road below tells the mountain's story in fractured tarmac.
Couple
The Great Ridge stands with England's finest short ridge walks — exposed enough to thrill, sheltered enough to talk — ending in Castleton for a pub supper.
Friends
Ridge plus caves makes a day above and below ground — scramble, views and underworld; the conversations write themselves.
- The Shivering Mountain defeated a main road, and the wreckage is the exhibit.
- The ridge to Lose Hill blasts with wind and views from Kinder to the Hope Valley.
- Three-thousand-year-old ramparts still ring the summit under grass.
- Paragliders launch from the flank, adding a surreal layer to the drama.
A cheese and onion cob eaten on the ridge with wind in your teeth.
Pints under smoke-blackened beams in a Hope Valley inn.
Kamikochi
Japan
A river the colour of glacial flour through an alpine valley closed to private cars.
Cape Breton Highlands
Canada
From the Skyline Trail's cliff decks you watch for whales; moose live on the plateau behind.
Arthur's Pass
New Zealand
An alpine village where the world's only mountain parrot audits every arriving car.
Tongariro Alpine Crossing
New Zealand
Emerald lakes glow in active volcanic craters on a moonscape ridge traverse.
Bristol
England
Street art erupts from harbour walls where Banksy's ghost still prowls.
Brighton
England
Regency excess meets punk rebellion on a pebble beach that never sleeps.
Bedruthan Steps
England
Sea stacks stand in Atlantic surf below a clifftop you cannot leave.
Glastonbury
England
Where ley lines cross, Arthur allegedly sleeps, and the veil feels genuinely thin.