(S/E) From The Millstone Country Inn front door, cross the main road (A6187) and turn right (downhill) along the pavement. Follow the road for 1⁄2 mile into Hathersage.
(1) Turn right into School Lane, then beyond the school turn left up Church Bank. Keep left to pass the church. When the road bends left to the church car park, cross a stile on the right.
Look out for a path on the left that drops down to a ‘clapper’ bridge over a small stream. Beyond the stream, follow a hedge straight ahead.
(2) At a waymark post, turn half-right, up the slope to the top corner of the field where the path passes through the hedge and then continues along the bottom of the upper field.
Pass to the right of the buildings of Cowclose Farm and then join the drive briefly, before taking a path on the left to the road. Turn left then immediately right, up the metalled drive to North Lees Hall.
(3) At North Lees, walk past the hall then turn right before the farm to emerge into open fields. Walk up the field and through a wood, turning left to reach the road by the toilet block. Turn right along the road, then left on the obvious path up to Stanage Plantation, swinging right when you meet the path coming up from the car park.
(4) Follow the slabbed path through the wood then emerge into open country and follow the obvious route that heads obliquely up to the top of Stanage Edge. Turn right and pick your way along the edge path for one mile, until you approach a trig point.
(5) (Robin Hood’s Cave is about halfway along this section, accessed via a wide bouldery ledge below the overhanging main edge; if exploring, take the safer route through the short inner cave to the right rather than the exposed outer route directly above the cliff face.)
Just before the trig point, pick your way down to the right through the rocks (past a group of millstones) and follow the obvious path out to the road.
(6) Cross and go through a wooden gate opposite and walk half-left toward Higger Tor. Just before the road, turn right down a grassy track.
This drops steeply to join a bridleway and then passes the ruined buildings of Callow Farm. Beyond Callow and just before a bridge over a stream, turn left up the drive to Mitchell Field Farm.
(7) Beyond the farm buildings, turn right before the exit gate, through a clump of trees and over a wall stile into a field. Walk across the corner of the field to another stile and into open country.
Follow the fairly obvious path to Scraperlow. The official right-of-way goes through the gate and down the drive, but the de facto route skirts to the left of the outside wall of the property.
(8) Beyond the house, join and follow the entrance drive, which swings left and left again to meet the road at Little Moor.
(9) Turn right and walk downhill, passing a covered reservoir on your right. At the junction with the main road, turn right along a no-through road. When this swings right to a set of gates, turn left and immediately left again to drop down to The Millstone Country Inn.(S/E)
