Thinking of heading up and having a pop at climbing one of these two from New Mills tomorrow, I’ve seen a few people around both, which is easier? (I’m out tonight, so may be a little worse for wear) and which is generally a better route? Pros and cons etc?

Which routes do you mean? The one thing I’d say, if you’re heading up Kinder, is that the bottom of the Edale Cross bridleway has been utterly borked by the National Trust covering it in rubble a few years back, so if you want to head up that way you’re better off climbing up from the reservoir side then cutting across. I was up there a couple of days ago and it’s pretty dry and riding well.

If you simply want the easier riding, the Pennine Bridleway below Lantern Pike is the one to go for, but it depends a bit on what you mix it up with.

I don’t know if that helps as I’m not quite sure exactly what you’re asking, but the Kinder side tends to be rockier and bigger generally.

Lantern Pike is smaller / easier. But a better route would be Laneside, over Chinley Churn, Peep ‘O Day farm, descend white lady/coldwell clough, up towards kinder low, L to the reservoir, up to middle moor/ shooting cabins, then to lantern pike and descend back to New Mills.

I’m up for sweating out the booze, just don’t know what to expect with either. I climbed up to the top of Castleton the other day which was fun, just fancy somehwhere different, I’ll be coming from the Sett Valley trail way and aiming for about 2-3 hours riding.

I’d climb up the Pennine Bridleway from Birch Vale cafe (even though it’s on the same road as my house, I couldn’t tell you name of it), then around the bottom of Lantern Pike, across the Boggy Moor of Doom, up the pitched road and down past Robin Hood’s Picking Rods, left on the road and right at the pub that now isn’t a pub and past the house and through The Cow Abusers farm, left at Mellor Church and onto Shiloh Rd, turn right to Mellor Road, slight right at the junction and go past Helicopter House to Mellor T (no longer Mellor Cross), left up the bridleway or right down the hill and do some stuff round Mellor and Roman Lakes.

up towards kinder low

That’s the NT-modified walk on fist-sized rubble btw. And the cafe is called the Sett Valley Cafe I think. It’s quite pleasant.

Anyway… 🙂

BWD – ah ok. Sorry, should have caveated my knowledge as ‘pre 2012, because that’s when I left those parts!’
🙂
Is the rest of that loop intact then?

Route modification:
So then after the white lady, go into hayfield and climb up to middle moor via 20 trees

Yeah, stuff has subtly changed in the way it does. The bridleway across and then down towards Kinder Res is wider and more hummocked than it used to be, but it’s mostly dry at the moment. Chinley Churn got mildly massacred by a dry stone walling team a year or so back, but is mostly intact. The descent through the walk through farm is a bit more ribboned than it used to be and the Shooting Cabin continues its gradual tendency towards rubbly wideness…

But that climb is covered with rubble that’s horrible to ride on a bike or walk or run on and not great for horses either, apparently. It’s fenced in too, so you can’t bypass it on the side. Apparently the National Trust did it to facilitate 4×4 farm and MRT access, but it’s pretty horrid up or down.

The campsite descent into Hayfield is maturing nicely though 🙂

Ah yes I remember the ever-changing shooting cabin descent – one of my favourites, regardless of what state it was in and nicely split into 2 by rolling down the steps and cleaning it out of the stream.

Rubble doesn’t sound good. That used to be a nice long,tough and partly rocky climb. A good ‘earn’ your descent sort of climb. Boo

To be fair, it’s just the bottom section up to the gate just below where the bridleway that comes off Kinder Reservoir hits the main track, but it’s nigh on unrideable going up and really unpleasant in a ‘change direction or speed and you’re off’ sort of way heading down.

Shooting Cabin as good as ever, but the main road climb up to the Monk’s Road at the bottom is still nasty and feels dangerous – you can bypass it on the permissive footpath that heads up parallel to the road from the bridge at the bottom. Nothing exciting, but preferable to car zombie death roulette on the main road…

I’ve not got out, combination of alcohol and Late night has caused a long lie in.
I’m going to go up on Monday instead, some really good sounding stuff here. I know mostly round new mills, Roman lakes and a little of castleton and rowarth.
Definatley going to try and sit down and plan a good long route to do on Monday tomorrow.