High Peak Celebrates 50 years

This year (2024) the High Peak Group has been celebrating its 50th birthday, and was probably the first local group. Much has been said as to how we should celebrate and a few months ago a date was set - a three day event based from Youlgreave Youth Hostel on November 1st - 3rd with member led walks on two of the days.

Haydn Morris and Dick Chell started the High Peak Group and I remember walking with Haydn somewhere in the Kinder area and it never stopped raining! But it never put me off and I was eager to join every walk possible. Haydn is no longer a member but is well and an artist in Cumbria (look him up).

Haydn and Harvard Prosser also started the High Peak Marathon in 1972, when they were at Sheffield University; it’s a tough 42 mile event which takes place in early March and teams of 4 set off between 11 and 12 at night. I have been a team member twice, both of which were the worst weather wise and had to be cut short, once for excessive ice and snow and the other when blizzard conditions were encountered.

Our High Peak Group have hosted three hundreds in the Peak District and for the last three years have organised the Goyt Valley Challenge based in Buxton; the challenge walk attracts 200 - 300 entrants. Many High Peak members have completed hundreds and especially this year when quite a number completed the Speyside Hundred.

The High Peak Group has grown in strength and for many years the AGM was a 10 minute affair during a coffee break on one of the walks; now we have an enthusiastic committee who meet regularly, and in particular to organize the Goyt Valley Challenge. Whilst a comfortable number of 20 plus regularly join a walk, the January walk often attracts up to 40. Evening walks of 6 - 8 miles have become popular in the Spring/Summer months.

The High Peak is a land locked area in what can only be described as in wonderfully varied terrain - from the 2,000’ moors of Kinder and Bleaklow in the north to rolling plains in the south, not forgetting the many limestone ‘edges’. Our walks occasionally venture into neighboring counties - Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire, Leicestershire, Yorkshire and a small part of Cheshire.

Long weekends away have been organised and occasionally abroad; perhaps the most notable being the Tour du Mont Blanc a few years ago. Christmas Dinners are always looked forward to where we combine with the Sherwood group.

The photos show contrasting areas - crossing a gully/stream at around 2,000’ on Kinder, and a group on the Derbyshire/ Nottinghamshire border on a walk from Creswell Crags.

In June 2022 our group celebrated 50 years of the LDWA at the end of a walk with a celebratory buffet at a pub in Warslow. I was greatly honoured to be presented with a ‘signpost’ being the longest standing High Peak member (LDWA 208); it shows my age at the time, the number of years of the High Peak Group, and the number of years that Pippa and I had been married.

The High Peak LDWA is as strong as ever, and long may it continue.

Alec Horn