In fact, if you get lost (like we did) on the way there, you might happen upon a road that suddenly brings you to the now abandoned A625 – the government was forced to close back in the late seventies after a number of landslides over the years took their toll… It has quite a surreal and rather eerie feel to it now, but is super popular with mountain bikers and ramblers today… Mam Tor is also aptly known as the Shivering Mountain thanks to frequent shale landslides on its eastern side. The ridge along the summit can be made a lengthy walk of if you’re feeling really energetic, and having seen several amazing sunrise images on instagram, I am more than tempted to go back and trek much further to see if I can capture the same myself!

When you get to the very top, the views are worth any amount of huffing and puffing, stretching out over the Edale Valley and Kinder Scout on one side, and the Hope Valley to the other. The name Mam Tor translates pretty much to what you imagine it might – Mother Hill – and at only 517 metres high, it’s not too much of a struggle to scale from the National Trust car park below… We decided to make a day of it by scaling the wild and beautiful Mam Tor first however, as it’s just a stone’s throw up the road, and it would have been rude not to. That’s not the kind of recommendation you get every day obviously, and of course, once mentioning the name of this place to the Small People it was nudged very firmly to the top of our to do list (as is the tradition in our house it seems)…

On popping over to meet Brutus (obviously not his real name, but believe me it suits him!) and have a quick bite of lunch with us recently (one really good thing about moving back!) my friend Trish from Mum’s Gone To happened to mention that whilst we were in the Peaks, we had to put The Devil’s Arse on our list of things to see. Coming back to the UK, it’s been really useful to call on the advice of other travel blogging friends about visiting areas that are new to us, and slightly interrogating them on their must see things.

Mam tor summit