9 Grinlow and Axe Edge

Solomon's Temple, Grinlow

From Poole's Cavern, Buxton

11.6km/7¼ miles 3¾ hours
PARK (GR 050726) Accessed via Green Lane use the Poole’s Cavern/Go Ape pay and display car park principal access to Buxton Country Park.

After-walk Refreshment: Poole’s Cavern café and an abundance of choice in Buxton.

Lying in a bowl of sombre gritstone hills, yet as a planned town Buxton’s beauties belong astutely to the sparkle of limestone. Since constructed, in early Victorian times, Solomon’s Temple on Grinlow has been the acknowledged vantage to get the best possible perspective of this architecturally lovely centre of health and culture. That the immediate surround of limestone country failed to make it into the Peak Park has everything to do with its economic value to industry, but a walk that ventures on to Axe Edge Moor, returning over the Dove threshold reveals the setting visually and emotionally to perfection. The 45-minute guided tour of Poole’s Cavern’s amazing show of stalactites and stalagmites witnessing the River Wye’s subterranean birth in the fantastic limestone labyrinth makes a fitting finale to this rocky ramble.

Buxton Pavilion Gardens

Go Ape, Buxton Country Park

Buxton Pavilion

Grinlow Caravan Park, the perfect adaption of a n old limestone quarry

The Dane Valley Way below Terret Plantation

Approaching Axe Edge Moor

Dane Head, with coal shales mingling with the eroding peat

Grinlow from the Countess Cliff track

St Anne's Well and The Crescent, Buxton Spa