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About Apedale | Parking Location | OS Map | Current Weather
Snow had fallen quite heavily in the local area so we had decided we didn’t want to head off out to the Peak District or really anywhere too high up. Rachel advised me of a nice walk she had seen around Apedale which wasn’t too far and the roads seemed clear so we headed off out. Parking was easy and only the last few 100 yards had some snow on the road.
Once we parked up, we checked the map and headed off past the heritage centre and made our way up the slight incline. It was straight walking for half a km, before leaving the main country park. We walked alongside an industrial estate to the right before heading back into woodland, it got progressively muddier here, luckily the cold snap had hardened most of this so it was still easy going.
Following the track along we followed the forest around to the left but headed through and opening that headed across two boggy sections which luckily had wooden walkways laid down. Once we reached the opposite side of the opening we entered back into the woods and from here, the walk started to gain a bit of height. We circled around to walk alongside a field to the left and headed up through the rougher woodland even in the snow there was an obvious path and it wasn’t too difficult to follow this through the forest. Eventually this lead to a T-junction that we strayed left, and headed down a small gradient through to the small road at the bottom.
This quiet and small road led the two of us down past a number of farms until we joined Apedale road, this was also very quiet and after a few 100 yards we took a right turn down an access route. We could have followed the road all the way, but decided to take a slight detour through the forest and get back to nature, it was here we stumbled upon an old building which some park benches and decided to settle down for lunch. After having a snack, we moved on through the winding paths of the woodland and even ended up walking down the wrong way for a small amount of time distracted by some rabbits running around in the snow! Around 5.8km to 6km in you will see an obvious U-turn, if you don’t see the rabbits running around you can miss this bit out!
After this we headed back onto the route that we had planned we started gaining some height again all the way up the path until we hit the peak of Apedale community country park. The views from here are spectacular and you can see large stretches of Staffordshire from here. Even in the cold we just wanted to sit and stare and the views. Upon leaving the peak, we headed down a wide path than lead back down to one of the main routes through the park and upon joining one of these we followed it for a small amount of time.
As we got parallel to the car park we followed a small track through the woodland which winded its way down to the car. We will be heading back this way in the summer to take in some of these special views and to see how different the walk in during the warmer months however this is a great walk in the winter.
