13/5/23
With trying to knock off all of the Ethels, I thought I would take a trip to some of the more random Ethels no one ever talks about. These ones tend to be routes I make myself with no clue what I may see on the way.
Doing it backwards was the best thing I did as it meant I did the hardest Ethel first followed by going the easier way up the others. It was a lovely and interesting day. Parked up in Ashford in the Water for free, which also has toilets for 20p. The nice thing about this hike is that after the first Ethel you come back past the toilets, not often you are provided actual toilets on a hike haha.
We came across a lovely old building called Magpie mine, it is an interesting building to look around, with lots to look at. They provide information regarding the mine and even do events, open days and walks to tell you about the history of the area and the building, really worth a look if you have never been.
The hike isn’t the easiest of hikes and it is just over 15 miles. There is a little bit of road walking involved with this one too. 1 Ethel and trig point also on private land which the farmer 100% wants to keep you out of, there is barbed wire, random gates they have put up and even gone to the hassle of moving the trig point from the middle of the field to the side and put it on its side so you cannot see it. If you don’t want it in your field why not move it to the wall everyone is attempting to climb over so people can still get it…I just don’t get it! We did not go climbing over into private land for this one though, but you could see people have.
You come across the Monsal trail which you do head on over. As you can see in the pictures above, you get to see the lovely Monsal bridge, before you get to that though, you come across the famous pub/cafe with the ice cream at the top of the trail, so that gives you a nice stop about half way around the hike. You head over the Monsal bridge and even get to see the long tunnel that is famous on the trail. The trail is so busy on a nice day at the weekend, not something I would want to be repeating any time soon.
There are a lot less cows on this hike…Well….I say a lot less….We came across less fields of cows that we had to try and get through, at the moment so many of them in the Peaks have Carfs and do not like the look of people at all! Last weekend we seen many fields of cows and kept trying to find ways around them. This week though, we came across 2 fields of cows, 1st is on top of one of the trigs but the cows were so hot they were hiding under a tree…They left us alone which was nice. The worst part of this hike is when you are on the road towards the last Ethel, you come across a field of about 40 cows and the only thing holding them in is 2 ropes….Because that is going to stop cows from trying to get us! We walked into the field, realised they were far to interested in what we were and started running to try and get close to us. We turned round and went back to the road and headed up a different way…Which looking back was a much easier route anyway, just included a bit more road walking! So advice is if you decide to go and do this hike and come across 40 odd black and white cows….DO NOT attempt to go in their field lol!
Other than that this hike is a lovely hike to do, with amazing views, so much peace and quiet and you do not see too many people until the Monsal trail.
Hope you enjoy this hike as much as I did 🙂
You will find many more of our interesting hikes on here, on our socials and on our YouTube! You can find everything on this link: https://linktr.ee/Acasualhikersguide Come and join us and see where we head off to next!
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