If there’s one thing that the Peak District has a lot of, it’s Edges.
The Peak District can roughly be divided into two areas: the White Peak, and the Dark Peak. The naming is based on the underlying geology: the White Park is limestone, and the Dark Peak is gritstone.
You’ll find the Peak District’s edges exclusively in the Dark Peak, particularly the eastern part of the National Park. From below, they appear has formidable walls and cliffs with fantastical rock formations and crags. Beyond those crags usually lies acres of boggy moorland.
On this particular occasion, we decided to explore every nook and cranny of two of the more famous edges: Froggatt Edge and Curbar Edge. They form a near-continuous route, north to south.
The day was bright, much cooler, and clear, save for the creeping clouds that gradually covered the sun as the day went on. Nevertheless, the scenes were absolutely sublime.
All photos taken on my Sony a7ii using my Sony FE 28–70mm f3.5–5.6 OSS and Vivitar “Series 1” 70–210mm f2.8–4.0 zoom lenses. RAWs developed and edited in Lightroom for iPad, finalised in Darkroom for iPad.
Starting from the north, the first part of the walk involves a beautiful woodland, Froggatt Woods, full of silver birch and autumnal ferns.
Emerging out of the woods, the views quickly open up and we find our first clump of gritstone boulders to climb around. Lisabet immediately hopped on one for a better view.
Already my excitement levels build as a veritable playground of compositions and rock formations present themselves to me.
A smooth nook in this boulder provided a nice foreground composition, with other crags forming a lead line towards the distant Upper Derwent Valley.
Lisabet’s woodland elf-like abilities means she easily clambers up to the highest boulder to nab those special photos. For me, her slight frame provides wonderful context for the scene.
An isolated pillar of a crag, whipped into otherworldly shapes by millennia or wind and rain, provides a lovely subject for this composition of heather, tors, and across the valley.
Navigating through the various crags and boulders, a little gap catches my eye. As peep through it, a sheer cliff wall down to the valley floor makes my stomach grip. And of course, I snap a photo to convey this sudden drop.
There’s not much separation between Froggatt and Curbar Edge. However, the drop from Curbar Edge is even more severe. This gap between two walls of gritstone provides a lovely leading line towards Baslow Edge in the distance.
Clambering on top of the some of the crags, these beautifully smoothed boulders with deep fissures provide a paradise of compositions, which I line up with Baslow Edge far away.
The staggeringly sheer drop down from the top of Curbar Edge is a sensation I’ll never forget.
This was about as close as I dared to the edge of the precipitous fall to the valley bottom from Curbar Edge.
A stronger burst of sun pulls out all the detail and texture in these windshaped crags.
The amount of heather up on Curbar and Froggatt Edge makes me realise that I need to come back here in late summer, when the heather’s vibrant magenta flowers will carpet the landscape.
Two neighbouring boulders, blasted by wind and rain for millennia, give another gorgeous composition to shoot as stronger sunlight emerges.
Quarrying has occurred on the Peak District’s various edges for centuries. The hard-wearing gritstone made for great millstones, used to grind grain like oats, barley and rye or other feedstuffs.
A lady rests in a nook on Curbar Edge, taking in the panoramic views whilst talking on her phone. She gave the scene a wonderful sense of context and scale that I couldn’t ignore.
Another isolated pinnacle of gritstone catches my eye. As the sun emerges again from the clouds, I line up this composition, using the various boulders to point a zigzagging route to the pinnacle.
Great slabs of gritstone with fissures and covered in lichen allow me to draw another composition looking north as the sun bathes the scene.
After we stopped from lunch using a boulder as shelter, we head back north along the trail. I equip my longer 70–210 mm lens to try and nail some zoomed in, tighter compositions. Here, from the edge, I zoom in on Stony Middleton nestled in its deep limestone gorge.
I enjoyed zooming in on the fell side as it caught the light; the land neatly divided by drystone walls, as a contrast to the pillars of rough gritstone.