Bleaklow Head and the B-29 wreck

Bleaklow Head, at 633m according to the Database of British and Irish Hills, is the high point of a broad peat plateau immediately north of Kinder Scout across the Snake Pass. The route onto it follows Doctor’s Gate, a packhorse track first recorded in 1627 as “Docto Talbotes Gate”, named for Dr John Talbot, vicar of Glossop, who is credited with improving the road over the summit in the closing years of the fifteenth century; Derbyshire County Council’s Historic Environment Record notes that, despite its reputation as a Roman road linking the forts at Glossop and Brough, no evidence of that antiquity has been discovered.

From a lay-by on the A57 about 2km below the top of the Snake Pass, the route crosses the road and drops to a footbridge before climbing onto the moor to join the Pennine Way, passing Higher Shelf Stones, a 622m top marked by a trig point and, more strikingly, by wreckage still scattered across the peat. A Boeing RB-29A Superfortress named Over Exposed, flying from Scampton in Lincolnshire to Burtonwood near Warrington, struck the moor here on the morning of 3 November 1948, killing all thirteen men aboard; engine blocks, spars and fuselage sections remain where the aircraft came down. From the crash site the way continues to Bleaklow Head’s own summit, marked only by a small cairn on a peat hag, before a rougher return by Grains in the Water and Lady Clough.

The full round is 15.4km with 470m of ascent and five hours fifty minutes at a steady pace, by Walking Britain’s measure, over ground its own route notes describe as rough, boggy, wild and lonely, with tricky navigation should cloud come down. Bleaklow suits a confident, well-equipped walker happy without a path underfoot for long stretches, map and compass in hand rather than relying on a trodden line across the peat. Anyone planning a first hill day or a family outing should leave it alone, as should anyone unwilling to get wet feet on Doctor’s Gate’s boggier sections; for high ground on a clear, well-trodden path, Mam Tor and the Great Ridge rise on the south side of the Edale valley, with no open moor to navigate.