did a great walk today from the Snake Pass Inn up Ashop Clough along Kinder north ridge and back. The conditions were great, being dry so the Peaty parts were easy to walk on.
interestingly I could see someone had ridden up or down [url= http://www.streetmap.co.uk/map.srf?X=409655&Y=390765&A=Y&Z=120 ]Ashop Clough[/url], although it must invlove some pushing.
Just wondered if anyone did this as a night ride, perhaps with Williams clough and Doctors gate making a loop from Glossop.
Anf if so what would be the best direction ?
ping
It's been done, or large chunks of it have, but - in no particular order - Doctor's Gate is a Marmite sort of trail, you either like it or not, my personal opinion is that it doesn't have much flow and is a better running than biking route. A lot of William Clough - the upper section - would be very hard to ride. By Ashop Clough, I guess you mean the Snake Path, which is a lovely trail, but bear in mind that the surface tends to show bike tracks pretty clearly and the Peak Park folk get very animated about any cheeky riding around the Kinder area.
If you were, ahem, theoretically going to do it, you'd mostly likely ride up Chunal out of Glossop, cut across Middle Moor then front the top round the corner to Willam Clough - staying high, nice singletrack - push up William Clough (if you want to ride, paved slabs from the summit of Chunal up to Mill HIll are very rideable albeit dull. Down the Snake Path, wooded singletrack. Interminable ride up A57 then down Doctor's Gate into Old Glossop I think.
Good route very early on a Sunday morning but back over Cut Gate rather than Doctor's Gate if you want better riding on the return leg.
That side of Kinder is lovely by the way, much quieter than the popular Downfall / Kinder Low edge and quite spectacular in parts. Great walk. Also makes a brilliant walking / running circuit from Edale where the plateau above Ringing Roger is really narrow. Ooh, sounds like a midweek mission 🙂
I *cough* may have ridden/pushed up william clough and over kinder back in 2000. Reformed character now.
cheers BWD - indeed it was a great walk. saw 1 couples on the walk up to the saddle, loads of people on the short steep climb up to kinder itself then 3 more couples on the walk back to the Snake Pass.
I walked William Clough last May (was a route in Trail Walker magazine) and was surprised to see a group of bikers at the end of the res heading off & up away from William Clough, but they'd obviously ridden/pushed/carried a decent section of footpath to get to that point. Not got the OS or MM in front of me so can't give a GR but fairly certain that the area in question isn't too populated with bridleways, and is more footpath territory.
missingfrontallobe,
try this as a great free alternative http://wtp2.appspot.com/wheresthepath.htm
Thanks MBMM, I'll take a look at that.
OK, looking at that website thwe route I saw this group take isn't even on the map, although if you look on the Google Earth side you can see to the very northern tip of Kinder res a point where several paths/routes converge, most of which are not on the OS. The riders I saw took one of the tracks heading in a southerly drection which then took then I think towards SK 0627 8848. Got to stress thats a maybe, as other than wondering why they were riding there I didn't pay that much attention.
Don't know if this helps at all!