We headed north from the car park along a well made path that skirts around the west side of the Derwent Reservoir. The reservoir itself covers nearly 175 acres and can hold up to 11,000 million gallons of water! The villages of Derwent and Ashopton were submerged in order to build the reservoir. Haunting pictures of these former villages can be found on the walls of most of the local pubs for tourists to gawp at. For a while the church spire of Derwent’s Church used to poke up when the water was level low – however it proved to be a little too alluring to nutters wanting to freeze their nuts off in a bid to swim out and clamber up it, so in 1947 the decision was taken to demolish it. If you are interested in knowing more about the villages that were dismantled, there is was a mini documentary made about it in 1966 which can be seen here and worth watching!

As the path round the dam bends towards the left there is further path turning left, which leads up in between a valley of forestry commission woodland. Follow this path along until it peters out and you get to a very small brook. Turn right and make your way off-piste over lumpy moss covered logs (careful now) up the very steep hill. You are aiming to keep the stream on your left until you get up onto the moor. If you thought the route was going to get easier here, I’m here to tell you you are WRONG!

Once you get onto the moor continue up the hill, bending slightly to the left, but always going up! Stomp your way through the heather, which while very pretty, is often of varying lengths and not always easy to walk through. In amongst the heather you’ll sometimes see little black berries growing – these are Bilberries and you can eat them! Not too dissimilar to a blueberry.

Anyways, its round about here that Alasdair the dog and I had a melt down (yep, helpfully positioned right at the beginning of the walk).

Alasdair being of shorter stature than the height of the heather, sat down and refused to go anywhere. He was not moving his Poodle Paws one inch. This carrying the little blighter nearly 2km across the heather. You can tell from the picture below that I think he quite enjoyed this experience.

One thing I should probably mention about heather is that it covers all manner of things beneath it. For example, you might not see 3ft crevices which are brim full of peaty water. Well I managed to sink my right foot into one of these crevices, which resulted in all sorts of swearing and general discontent. Let me tell you – walking around in wet socks is RUBBISH! Luckily I had some double sockage going on which meant I could transfer a dry sock from my left foot onto my poor right wet foot. Narrowly missed getting trench foot I reckon! Am seriously considering setting up a nationwide Sock Charity where clean dry pairs of socks in boxes across the countryside for for those in dire need!

Once you have made it up to the top of the hill you will be richly rewarded with a view from the top of Alport Castles, and joy of joys A PATH!!! A proper path! Alport Castles are basically a massive landslide – perhaps the largest in England. A lot of the Peak District is sat on top of black shale, and it can make parts of it a little unstable. Don’t you go worrying about that though – enjoy them from a distance and resist the urge to go clamber up up them.

About half a km after Alport Castles you will see a path to the right. follow this and make your way down the hill. You’ll catch a glimpse of the Derwent Reservoir to your right and you can take a moment to admire all that heather and hillage you clambered through!

The path gets pretty steep and enters beautiful woodland – this really is one of those walks where every corner you turn there is more landscape porn to look at. Alasdair by this point thinks its his birthday. Out on a walk that lasts ALL DAY!!! Four little legs powered by a handful of kibble and a third of a tin of pedigree chum.

The path will exit the woodland and start to zig its way up a steep hill on your right. Eventually you will reach the top and make your way down what is essentially a massive drain. It probably didn’t start out as a big drain, but mass erosion of the peat has meant it has become so – its twice as deep as me in some places. Ecologically this is pretty rubbish, but this probably isn’t platform to go into it.

Feeling a little peckish we decided it was around about time for lunch, and we happened upon a perfect venue. Two little rustic huts designed as a place for the local shoot to meet, have a spot of lunch and shelter from the weather.

The one with the door on is for the guns and the open ended one is for the poor old beaters! We snacked on our cornish pasties and Alasdair enjoyed his Bakers Chicken Twists (haribo for dogs right?), before making our way further down the hill, but keeping to the left of the deep clough. Ahead of you to the right, you should be able to see the crow stones on the ridge of the moor.

Eventually you will get to a stream and the general idea here is that you cross it unscathed with no hint of a wet sock. I’d like to say I managed this but alas, despite a 1/km detour (the little dog leg bit you see on the map!) I still managed to fall in. By this point I had pretty much resigned myself to having soggy toes so wasn’t too bothered, and the plus side of the little diversion was that we got to see these very pretty mini waterfalls.

You’ll be pleased to know at this point you have broken the back of any form of hillage, whether thats walking up them or down them. Just the small matter of a very enjoyable 11km walk back to the start with awe inspiring views around every corner.

Perhaps as you walk south along the edge of Howden Moor you might like to consider what it would be like if a UFO flew past, followed closely by RAF Tornado Jets and a supersonic boom! The hills are full of tales of such things, which apparently occurred on a March Monday night back in 1997. There are a wide range of eye-witnesses that reported seeing everything from triangular UFO’s, floating luminous sausage shapes (hmmm yum!) and explosions as a ghost plane crashed into the moors above you. What followed was a painstaking search of the moors, but no evidence was found of any wreckage and the search was eventually called off. No planes were reported missing and the government denied there had been any planes out on military exercise that night, despite there being strong evidence from the British Geological Survey of two sonic booms over the Sheffield area. Everyone got a bit shifty for a bit and looked at the floor, unable to answer any questions without raising a few of their own, until eventually the following year a RAF spokesman said…

“…..We don’t discount there may be unexplained phenomena in the sky, but we are not funded to investigate them. We would admit the fact if we had chased a UFO. There were no intercept missions that night. There is no cover-up. We don’t know what caused the sightings and the sonic booms and the whole thing remains a mystery to us. We don’t know what went on and there will always be people who seize on mysteries like this to make claims about cover-ups.” (Ref UK National Archives release DEFE 24 2076)

So there you go, believe what you will. Personally I quite like the idea that a couple of RAF personnel decided to go joy-riding with some expensive kit and it all got hushed up, but truly I haven’t got a clue and its probably just a cool story.

Eventually you will meet back up again with the reservoir and you’ll start to skirt around the East side of the dam. Probably by now, unless you are a stalwart hiker your footsies are a bit sore, and you are feeling grateful that the path has become covered in tarmac and is feeling nice and substantial. As we were walking along this bit the light was starting to fade and we were treated to a rather spectacular sunset over the Howden Dam.

Eventually you make it to the end of the reservoir and take a stepped path (yes your thighs will be jelly at this point!) down to the foot of the dam and make your way across to the car park.

Here you can have a nice sit down, and ponder on which pub you will be visiting for your well earned steak dinner and pint of scotch!!!