A warm, springtime sun lit up the little farmyard pond at Hartcliff, allowing the ducks the indulgence of basking and preening at the water's edge, a pleasure largely missing here this spring. Here we were at almost 1,200 feet and looking west to the Flouch crossroads where the Peak District national park boundary runs alongside the A616 for several miles towards Huddersfield. This boundary was created 60 years ago on 17 April 1951 when the area became Britain's first national park.
One of the highlight events within its borders was the designation of the formerly strictly private Snailsden Moor as open access territory from September 2004. Here on Hartcliff Hill we could look to the north-west and see the broad lift of moorland that culminates at the trig pillar on Snailsden Pike five miles away. We could imagine the plaintive call of curlews just back from some salty estuary and the solitary piping of a dunlin, seemingly lost in all that bogland waste. Up there, too, is the source of the Don, South Yorkshire's major river; John Holland (1794–1872) came here to locate that precise spot. Thereafter he walked the river's entire length down to the Ouse at Goole and produced his ground-breaking A Tour of the Don in 1837.
In the past six decades other historic events include the establishment of the Ranger Service in 1954 and the opening of the Pennine Way a year later. In 2000 the long-awaited Countryside and Rights of Way Act gave pedestrians the legal right to explore more areas of the national park, so we no longer have to run the gauntlet of gamekeepers on wonderlands like Snailsden Moor and Broomhead Moor.
A Boot Up the Dark Peak, and three other "Boot Up" walking guides by Roger Redfern, have recently been published by Halsgrove, price £4.99