The peak of perfection

Picturesque Edale is our favourite starting point for a ramble

WITH a population of just over 300, and facilities comprising a shop, a cafe, a couple of pubs and a hostel, it’s hardly a humming hotspot.

But Edale, a tiny village in the heart of the Peak District, has been named Britons’ favourite spot for starting a hike.

It’s a haven for ramblers and mountain bikers, and when Ordnance Survey conducted a study of data from its online and app mapping system, it found six of the 20 most-used UK grid squares were in Edale’s surrounding countryside.

Its popularity comes from being encircled by stunning moorland and rocky crags.

Edale village was the second-busiest OS grid square in Britain last year, behind the summit of Mount Snowdon, in North Wales. But it has been the most popular starting point for people plotting their walks and rides – with 2,300 doing so in 2018. Other popular grid squares around Edale were on routes to Kinder Scout – the Peak District’s highest hill immediately north of the village – or on the ridge between Mam Tor and Lose Hill, to the south. Edale is also the start of the Pennine Way, the epic path running the length of the Pennines to the Scottish Border. Emma Stone, head of visitor experience for the Peak District National Park, was not shocked by the results.

She said: ‘Edale is well-known as the start of the world-famous Pennine Way and is surrounded by the iconic walks around Kinder Scout, Lose Hill and Mam Tor. Visitors can arrive in the village by train, which makes it really accessible..’

While Edale is where adventures start, and Snowdon – traversed by 2,370 groups of walkers using the OS app – is where most of the action happens, Fairholmes, also in Derbyshire, is the most common end-point for treks. Ten miles from Edale, the hamlet is next to the Derwent Valley reservoirs, the setting for practice runs by Dambusters air crews, who used bouncing bombs in World War Two.

Andrew Radburn, of OS, analysed 818,524 walking and cycling trips which were navigated using the app last year.

Of the top 20 most-used grid squares, eight were in the Peak District, ten in the Lake District and two in Snowdonia. The top five counties navigated via the OS Maps app were Cumbria, with 36,488 routes plotted, followed by Derbyshire, with 20,951, North Yorkshire with 20,196 routes, Gwynedd, which covers much of Snowdonia with 10,113 routes, and Powys, including the Brecon Beacons, with 10,058 routes.