A Walk around Black Rocks

Last month we took a day off and took a walk to explore the Black Rocks just outside of Cromford in Derbyshire.

Following a trail listed on the Derbyshire County Council website – we followed the blue route, first heading directly up the hill towards the Black Rocks.

Once climbing upwards the view across the valley are beautiful. The black rocks are an outcrop of grit, left behind following lead mining in the area.

We didn’t head to the very top of the Black Rocks (not a great fan of heights!), we headed round to the right through the woodland of Cromford Moor to come out looking across South East towards Wirksworth Moor. Stopping for a short rest at the top we then headed back down the rocky path. Please be warned that we walked down after a long dry spell meaning the path was dry and much easier to navigate. If the weather has been wet then this path looks like it gets very muddy and slippery and does involve climbing over some rather large rocks.

Once at the bottom and through the gate we headed right again along the Forestry Commission Track. Thankfully we had the GPS on our phone as finding the next path was a bit tricky – it was not very obvious.

We headed left through into the woodland along a footpath, however several trees had obviously come down in the woodland in the last few months and required some more careful climbing over to follow the trail. From there is was a lovely walk through the woodland heading back towards the High Peak Trail.

We’ve not walked along that section of the High Peak Trail before, with more large gritstone rocks and trees that have carefully rooted themselves onto the tops.