A Kinder Meander

Another planned Pennine 3 hr run last night. Helen had two volunteers, PaulB and me. The intention was to do the Kinder Trog, but going up the Giggle Gaggle rather than the road via Sunny Side. Started off OK but Helen cried off at the top of the Giggle Gaggle as she was feeling ill so Paul and I continued on. It was a nice evening and we carried onto the top of William Clough OK. By now it was getting quite a bit colder and Paul was not dressed warm enough so was not keen on going over Kinder. I would have carried on but we decided to head down William Clough and then follow the res around to Kinder Low End.

Turn right to William Clough

William Clough Decent

 Now I have been around this numerous times,in both directions in both day light and night time. We were going OK got to the woods below Mermaids Pool, crossed the bridge, up the track, took the left fork, through the gate, down the steep hill, through the next gate crossed the stream, crossed the stream again (WHY!!!) I knew I should not be crossing two streams but there was a trod going that way. I just switched my brain off - if there is a trod it must be right! Continued up the steep climb having long since lost the trod and my confidence we were going in the correct direction was waining. We finally got to a small rocky outcrop and I knew this is wrong. We decided to abandon it at that stage so turned around and headed generally west as Hayfield had to be in that general direction.

While messing about we could see a number of head-torches on a hill above and were curious as to who they were. Apparently the main Pennine group had gone up the 3 Knolls path, followed the Pennine Way to Kinder low Trig Point. From there they headed off towards Kinder Low End to decend. After quite a bit of running in the mist they ended up at Kinder Low Trig for a second time. Like us they done a bit of brute force navigation and headed off on a westerly compass setting to get off the hill. We probably  saw them as they found their way off. Kinder is quite forgiving on that front as there are relativly few places where it would be difficult to get off the plateau.

Some excellent navigation by Pennine's best!

 Out compass bearing took us a lovely decent through a number of fields (no right of way) to end up a Hilltop houses, from which it was a straight forward return to hayfield. We ended up doing 10 miles in 2 hrs so a decent enough run, despite my dodgy navigation. The main group had just got back a few minutes before us as many of them were still in the carpark as we arrived back. I fell a bit better about it knowing somebody as experienced as GeoffB also went wrong :)

Paul got the plot up on Strava and we can see this lovely little out and back for 300 metres or so going in an easterly direction. The rocky outcrop we got to would have been in the three knolls path area.

Strava Plot here