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This Week's Walks - Archive

Please see the Saturday Walker's Club This Week's Walks page.

This is an archive of walks done by the Saturday Walker's Club. You should only need to use this page if the SWC website is down.

Friday 3 May 2019

Friday Walk - Bluebells in Sheffield: Sheffield Circular (via Porter, Limb, Sheaf and Gleadless Valleys) [Peak District Trip]

Length: from 15.0 km (9.4 mi) to 27.7 km (17.3 mi).
Cumulative ascent/descent: from 430/365 to 780/732m.
Buses or trains take you back to the station from various points on the route, for details see below
Net Walking Time: 4–8 hours.
Toughness:  from 5/10 to 10/10
                
Take the 09.02 Sheffield train from St. Pancras, arrives Sheffield at 11.01.
Return trains to London are plentiful, either direct to St. Pancras or via Doncaster to King’s Cross. Some reasonable prices are available.
Trains on the Hope Valley Line  towards Grindleford, Hathersage, Bamford, Hope and Edale leave xx.14 to 21.14, then 22.47 and 23.27.

“This walk leads from the hustle and bustle at the centre of one of the most populous British cities through gradually less urban areas into excellent walking country – with ancient escarpment woodlands, tumbling streams and panoramic views – through the scenic, wooded valleys of Sheffield’s south west, the greenest and cleanest of Britain’s large towns.
Escape from Sheffield’s City Centre, first along streets and through the atmospheric landscaped Victorian General Cemetery, then the woodlands of the municipal Endcliffe Park  and the narrow wooded Porter Valley  (part ancient woodlands, part plantation or meadows) to a viewpoint on the edge of moorlands at the fringe of the Peak District, and from there to the early lunch option (with views) in Ringinglow.
Continue by descending through the steep-sided Limb Valley, Whirlow Brook Park and Ecclesall Woods to Dore, a late lunch stop and your first chance for an early finish: a train or a bus back to the City Centre. Several other opportunities for early finishes by bus arise in the further stages of the walk, whose following woodlands and valleys offer somewhat diminishing returns in pleasure and in ‘otherness’.
From Dore you climb once again through Ladies’ Spring Wood and Chancet Wood to Graves Park. From there the walk continues through the Gleadless Valley and Meersbrook Park back to the City Centre, but for the return to Sheffield Midland Station you’ll need to take a bus, regardless of where you finish.
The route includes large parts of the waymarked ‘Sheffield Round Walk’, but diverges in places. Opportunities to avoid most of the hard surface walking at the start are described.”


Walk Options:
To cut some – or all – of the tarmac-heavy urban stretches at the start take one of the bus shortcut options from Sheffield Interchange (see the walk directions for how to get there from the train station). Details about bus frequency, bus stops to use, and the exact walk route once off the bus are provided at the end of the main walk text under ‘Bus Shortcuts’:
cut 1.6 km net: buses 4/4A to Sheffield Cemetery;
cut 3.2 km net: buses 6/65/271/272 to Endcliffe Park;
cut 3.8 km net: bus 120 to Whiteley Wood;
cut 6.2 km net: bus 120 to Forge Dam Café.
You can take a train back to Sheffield from Dore & Totley Station (15.0 km/9.4 mi) on the Hope Valley Line (8 mins journey time).
You can take a bus back to the City Centre from many places along the route, from Dore onwards.

Lunch: The Norfolk Arms in Ringinglow (10.2 km/6.4 mi, food served all day) or The Summerhouse in Dore (15.0 km/9.3 mi, food served all day).
Tea: The Rose Garden Cafe  (open to 16.00) plus plenty of options in Sheffield Town Centre.
                                                                                   
For walk directions, map, height profile, photos and gpx/kml files  click here. T=swc.267

6 comments:

Thomas G said...

Worried about carrying your luggage for the whole trip during the walk? There is a www.leftit.co.uk outfit just 1 minute from the station: £5 for the day, open 09.00-21.00 hours.

BrightSpark said...

If you intend catching a bus to Forge Dam Cafe, I advise you to have the full address on you because when I caught this bus a couple of years ago the bus driver had know idea where Forge Dam Cafe was. This caused problems because the bus driver had know idea what to charge us, plus she couldn't tell us where to get off. The Forge Dam Cafe is in Fulwood.

Thomas G said...

The bus stop is called: Brookhouse Hill/Silver Birch Avenue. See page 11 of the walk directions.

Anonymous said...

Is there a meeting place this evening, Friday. I see the cafe mentioned closes at 4pm.thank you, Gavin 07986789893

Thomas G said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Thomas G said...

It took just about 10 minutes to sort out the excess luggage problem, wwith 3 walkers dropping theirs at a 7-11 100m away and 1 other diverting past her hotel to meet us further along the route. This walk was posted as 'Bluebells in Sheffield', more in hope than expectation, but boy, did we get bluebells! From the General Cemetery onwards, the cemetery itself, every park and wood had them, there were no 5 minutes without patches, full slopes or valley bottoms of bluebells. Confidently the most I have seen in a day's walking, ever. Generally a little past the best, slightly paler than full coloured, but still taller and fuller than in the South. In the Porter Valley, the blues were outnumbered though by wild garlic, unbelievable as that may sound.
N=12 had started in rainy weather, but after an hour or so it turned to occasional drizzle (after elevenses at the Forge Dam Café), then stayed dry after lunch (at The Norfolk Arms). In Endcliffe Park we had amazingly passed the memorial for the 1944 fighter jet crash, just as the Sheffieldonian who had cared for it since then turned up for an interview with BBC TV. We saw a couple of herons in the Porter Brook, later plenty of ducklings and even some alpacas at Mayfield.
Walkers started dropping out at Dore Station, where the Hathersage-based 4 took the train to sort out food and drink supplies for the weekend. Then at every one of the next main road crossings one or other took a bus to the town centre.
W=rainy-start-then-dry-but-overcast.