Start The Little Mill Inn, Hollinsmoor Road, Rowarth, High Peak SK22 1EB (Tel: 01663 747678)
(S/E) From the front of The Little Mill Inn pub turn left. Just beyond the car park, turn right along a concrete drive past two houses. Pass Brookside Cottage on your left at the end of the drive and continue along the rocky path beyond until you reach the village green in the centre of Rowarth.
(1) Take the footpath on the right, beside the old telephone box. Follow the footpath down to and along the stream. When you reach a stile into a concrete track by a ford, cross a second stile opposite and continue along the left-hand bank of the stream beyond. At a footbridge, keep straight on, until you reach a stony track.
(2) Turn left and follow the rocky bridleway up the slope. When you reach a metalled driveway at a gate, turn right for a short distance. After 40m, turn left over a stile at a footpath sign and climb the walled path beyond. Cross another stile and continue climbing alongside a wall to yet another stile at a junction of paths.
(3) After the stile, bear right up the hillside (signposted “Cown Edge”) between gorse patches and old quarry pits. At a wall, cross a stile and continue ahead. Shortly, the wider and more obvious path continues across the middle of the field, but keep left here, close to the wall. Ignoring a stile on the left, follow a fence above a conifer plantation and pass another stile above the buildings of Near Slack Farm. Continue ahead along the field boundary and cross another stile next to a field gate into the fenced track to Far Slack Farm.
(4) At a junction of tracks, continue ahead past the farm buildings then follow a walled path to a hand-gate into a farm track. Turn left and follow the track to the Robin Hood’s Picking Rods (A). Just before the monument, look out on the right of the track for an unspectacular, but ancient, rock with cup-shaped depressions carved into it. Beyond Robin Hood’s Picking Rods, continue for 300m, looking out for a footpath sign and ladder stile in the wall on the left.
(5) Cross the stile and follow the path through the rushy field beyond. Climb a stile next to a farm
gate by a pond and bear right towards the end of a wall, where a wall stile crosses. Beyond the stile, follow the field boundary on the left, skirting a shallow pit. Just short of the farm, cross a stile on the left
into a farm track; turn right out to the road.
(6) Turn left along the road. Ignore a footpath sign on the left after 250m, then shortly afterwards turn left into a walled byway. Follow the byway to Ringstones Farm. Bear right past a barn and, beyond the farmhouse,
follow the metalled drive. At the end of the drive, turn left and walk downhill back to the Little Mill Inn, ignoring the turning into Goddard Lane after 350m. (S/E)
