Map Guide: OS Landranger 119 or Outdoor Leisure 24.

Note: No Grid References available on this walk at present.

Start from the Birchen Edge car park next to the Robin Hood Inn just outside of Baslow (just off the A619 heading towards Chesterfield). Turn left out of the car park and walk up the B6050 for 50yards and then turn left over the first stile. Follow the path to your left (not the right one) which runs alongside the golf course for 200 yards. Ignore the first junction on your right and take the second junction one up towards the gritstone edge through fairly dense undergrowth in summer. The path is well trodden so it will be easy to find. Once near Birchen Edge start to head to the left hand side (keeping the edge on your right). After a few hundred yards Nelson's monument can be seen on your right on top of Birchen Edge.

Continue past the monument and head back towards the path which is quite close now and continue towards the end of Birchen Edge where the path starts to go downhill through trees. Walk over the moorland, heading for the road in the distance. The ground here will become quite boggy after it has been raining but there are a series of small bridges over the wettest parts of the moor. Continue down to a stile at the side of the main A621 and cross over when safe to do so. Climb up the road opposite (signposted Curbar) for 200 yards until you come to a stile on the left hand side. Go through this onto a track.

The track will have a wall on your right hand side, continue up the track for half a mile past trees on the left hand side. Soon you will come upon Wellington's Monument on your left hand side. Continue the walk by following the track down the other side of the hill (do not turn right towards the Eagle Stone) towards a gate next to a wall and trees. Turn left before going through the gate and follow the narrow path with a wall and wire fence on your right hand side.

Follow the path downwards through trees and rocks, which gets steeper further down. A wall will gradually appear on your right hand side and the path will come to a stile. Climb this at the side of the outbuilding and continue down towards a footbridge over Bar Brook. Continue up the other side to the road (A621). Cross the road and climb the stile.

Follow the path up and over another stile and continue on through the trees and fern, up the hill, diagonally. Go through the gap in the wall. The path gets steeper here which goes through a wood to the top of Gardom's Edge. Carry on past the large boulders and through another gap in a wall to more moorland. At a junction of paths take the right one that heads off down the hill onto grass with a wood on your right hand side. Birchen Edge can be seen on the left here. Head down the hill following the path to the road (A619). At the bottom cross the stone stile onto pavement and turn left back up the road to the car park.

Walk first completed: September 2002
Walk last updated: September 2002