Walk 1

Dove Head and Washgate

Start/Finish Flash

Distance 8km (5 miles)

Time 3¾ hrs

Parking (GR 025673) Close to New Inn and beside water troughs space for couple of cars in middle of Flash

Terrain Hilly, with rough paths and tracks and some damp, stream-inundated sections

Refreshments Flash Bar Shores Tearoom and adjacent Travellers Rest and the New Inn in Flash 

Walk west from the New Inn passing the decaying Wesleyan chapel, an imposing tall square hall of a building with first floor steps and an early Victorian reworking of a late 18th-century chapel. It proclaims ‘The Lord loveth the gates of Zion’. The promised land in our case lies over the hill, so let’s be gone. Pass up by the old smithy and bear right up the track. Keep left and a weather eye out for a nippy dog. (If you see it, don’t turn your back on it but walk backwards through the gate.) 

Ignore an inviting lane leading on to a grand prospect towards Shutlingsloe, and instead heed the footpath sign directing right up the field. This path leads through wall-stiles back into the lane further on with the rocks of Wolf Edge on the horizon ahead. Negotiating muddy patches, clamber over a fence-stile in marshy ground and walk to where a short walled lane branches left. 

You may choose to go through the gate and follow this to visit the outcrop of Wolf Edge. This is an excellent early excuse to stop and admire the great expansive landscape of the Staffordshire Moorlands. Their character is nowhere better displayed. (The location may have a folk connection with a breeding place of the wolf – a flashback to that nipping dog!) 

Backtrack and follow the footpath heading on north. Waymark posts will keep you on course beyond a ruin. Spot a caravan and mast on top of Oliver Hill over in view to the right; at 513m (1683ft) this is the highest point in Staffordshire. The path descends through three stiles, leading along a strip of improved pasture to the left of Oxenstitch Farm to climb up onto the road at a fence-stile, which replaces the old stone stile above. Turn up right, branching left at the junction rising to Hilltop and then bear up left again passing through a cottage row with a red ‘Private’ notice to a final cottage. 

Go through the succeeding gate and follow the gravel track, declining gently along the slopes of Axe Edge End. After a galvanised gate cautiously cross the A53. (The Travellers Rest advert is a bit premature in the context of the walk.) Pass down and round to the left of Wallnook, through gates and hand-gates to enter a pasture. Go straight downhill with a wall to the right. After a stile the path becomes a shallow hollow way (sunken track) and after another you pass a concrete block pump house. The descending drove way becomes an irregularly walled passage, finally entering a very damp access to a wicket-gate onto a metalled lane, beside an upgraded drive to Mount Pleasant. 

Walk up the roadway ahead, passing the tidy entrance to Sycamore Cottage, to a road junction. There go straight across into the rising green lane, which narrows and turns sharp right. Descending easily to the former schoolhouse go left onto the road by the letterbox. Turn right, passing the former Brand Top school, now an occasional community hall, with a remote telephone kiosk and, a few paces on, a poignant sheltered war memorial. Cross the cattle grid and pass just beyond the ruined farm with a caravan behind.

A red footpath sign directs half-right from the fence-lined track. Aim downhill to the far corner of the pasture, where a broken-walled passage leads towards a barn and then bear half-left to a stile with distinctive tall posts. Cross the stile into the rough valley side below Howe Green. The path largely contours, guided by waymark posts curiously wrapped in barbed wire! Wading through the bracken come to a stile and keep along the edge to the ridge-end, where you meet up with another path and descend the nose of the ridge to a stile and flagstone bridge over the side stream just before its confluence with the Dove. The path clings to the wooded edge of the Dove gorge, towards the end accompanied by a fence to a wicket-gate into Washgate Lane. 

Turn right downhill.

The sadly disturbed cobbling of the ancient track here is all too evident – the result of ‘for fun’ off-road vehicles over the last dozen years. In September 2008 the stone inserted earlier in the year at the start of the ford to block vehicular access had already been maliciously uprooted. The intention of the National Park Authority is to reinstate the cobbling now that the ‘road’ has officially been redesignated a footpath only. 

The route turns acutely left immediately on the south side of the bridge. (The map shows a footpath climbing the steep bank ahead but it ain’t worth following!) 

Keep to the packhorse way, and avoid fording by keeping tight to the bank. The rock-stepped lane shows more evidence of tyre tread before levelling and capturing rainfall in deep pools. Where the lane emerges on the road at Tenterhill Farm a large boulder bars all vehicular traffic, the apparently temporary ‘road closed’ sign contradicting the permanent ‘bike and car’ sign, which has yet to be removed. 

Follow on up the road to Golling Gate, ‘the road flanked by marsh marigold’. At the junction turn right at the footpath sign into what becomes a narrow green lane. As it bends left it looks more like a stream than a path and water is quite awkward to dodge. After a hand-gate switch acutely right up to another hand-gate and continue within a sunken lane, walling largely absent on the left, rising to a hand-gate onto the road on the upland pastures of Colshaw. 

Turn left, following the road unswervingly to the junction with a rising road. Go straight across through the wicket-gate, left of a renovated stone shed. Cross the paddock to go through a second wicket-gate, now bearing half-right over a lost field boundary to a recessed hand-gate with access land sign in the fenced field corner. Contour forward along the bank top overlooking the Manifold valley with lovely views back to the upper Dove hills and Hollinsclough Moor. Slipping through light gorse descend on a clear path to the farm track at Nield Bank. Follow the open access track, which duly crosses the youthful Manifold and sweeps uphill on tarmac to a cattle grid where you once more cross the A53.