(S/E) From Waters Reach front door of the cottage, turn left and walk down to the Navigation Inn. Turn left into the car park, with the canal basin on your right.
(1) At the end of the car park bear left to join the Peak Forest Tramway Trail. Pass a tramway arch on your left and some houses on your right. After 3⁄4 mile, beyond an industrial site, cross a road (for the pubs in Whitehough, turn right) and then another after a further 300 yards.
(2) After 1⁄2 mile, shortly after the Forge Mill board, leave the trail on a footpath on the left, between stone gateposts. Follow Black Brook upstream, below a water treatment works, to Charley Lane via a stone footbridge over a pipeline.
Turn left then immediately right, passing between the buildings to a narrow stile leading into fields. Continue towards the viaducts via a gateway. Go through a wooden gate and (ignoring a footbridge on your left) pass under the viaducts before crossing the stream.
(3) In Chapel Milton turn left. (For the Fallow Deer, follow Bowden Lane opposite, passing under the A6, then turn left, returning the same way.) Pass Milton House then turn right into a driveway. At the last house, go through the wall on the left, and bear right to a gate and out to the road.
Turn left then immediately right and follow the road left over the railway bridge. At Breck Corner, turn right into a driveway. Turn left and left again at PNFS sign No. 231.
(4) Turn right into the farmyard and exit between the buildings in the left-hand corner. Cross a stile into a field and a stone stile opposite, then bear left to a second stone stile (PNFS 440). Cut the corner to a third stone stile, then head for PNFS sign No. 441 by a gateway.
Ignore a gate on the left, keeping above and right of the stream valley to another step stile. Aim for the farm buildings beyond to another wall stile into a farm lane.
(5) Turn left and walk out through the farm buildings, descending to the stream and climbing to the road beyond.
(6) Turn left along the lane for a short distance, then take a path over a slab stile right of the entrance to Redgate End Farm. Beyond the farm buildings a stile and a short walled track leads into open fields. Keep left to a wall corner, then turn right following the Concessionary Path sign across the field to a gate.
Follow the wall on your left up the ridge, then switch to the other side via a stile and keep on up the wall. Leave the wall briefly to go through a gate in a cross-wall, then return to it as you continue up the ridge. Beyond a stone step stile, keep to the right of the quarried area, until you eventually cross rough grazing and another wooden stile to the summit.
(7) Turn left and descend steeply to the saddle between South Head and Mount Famine. Turn left along the Pennine Bridleway and pass a gate by a National Trust sign. Beyond a further gate, turn right at a junction of tracks.
When the Pennine Bridleway turns right, turn left down a side track to the A624. Turn left along the near verge for 100 yards, then cross over into the lane past Peep-O-Day Farm (for the Lamb Inn, follow the main road downhill for 1⁄4 mile, returning the same way).
(8) Beyond the farm, take a track straight ahead through a gate. Pass some farm buildings on the left, then turn left onto a side track through a gate.
(9) After two more gates, pass Whiterakes farmhouse on your left, then follow the obvious path along the hillside and below the quarries of Cracken Edge. Descend a landslipped area above the winding house and continue as before, ignoring paths to left and right. The path eventually descends through gorse and spoil heaps to the road.
(10) Turn right (uphill) for 200 yards, then turn off on a footpath through a gate on the left. Descend to Cotebank Farm, passing through the garden down some steps. Cross the drive and go over a stone step stile. Head down the field, keeping right of a walled trackway which can be boggy.
At the bottom, climb a stile by a gate and cross an overgrown field with houses to left and right. Exit via a grassy driveway to the road.
(11) Turn right past the end of Dolly Lane, then bear left to pass under the railway bridge. Beyond the Primary School, turn left to return to Waters Reach. (S/E)
