📍4 Ethels Earned, One Trig Erased🙁

bootsandbanter
Oct 26
4 min read

Bright skies, brutal wind, and a trig that no longer exists

Date: 25 October 2025

📍Route: Hayfield → Mt Famine → South Head → fields with cows → fields with Highland cows → Eccles Pike → Chinley Churn (Ethel) → descent to Hayfield

📏Distance: 19.3 km

⬆️Ascent: 1035 m

⛰️ Ethels: #56 (Mt Famine), #57 (South Head), #58 (Eccles Pike), #59 (Chinley Churn)

Weather: Violent wind, bright sky, icy air — felt like February in full volume.

Mood: Calm, determined, slightly feral, mildly offended by the missing trig, but overall satisfied and weirdly excited for winter hikes.

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🅿️ Start — Hayfield

Parked on the roadside in Hayfield for free — my favourite price. Straight up towards Mt Famine, which wins Best Name in the Peak District Awards. A nice pull-up so much so I actually took my jacket off - not for long.

Nice views across to Brown Knoll and Kinder plateau where I have been just two weeks ago. The shape of the first ethel is quite nice actually. If you are dropped on the hillside you could be fooled you are somewhere in the Lakes.

🗻 Mt Famine — hostile name, hostile wind

I got to the top of the first ethel of the day quite quickly and the jacket, hat, hood and gloves were on in no time.

Windy enough to feel like a sequel to last Saturday but skies bright enough to pretend it was “crisp autumn”.

The top was no marked by anything. Three distinct rock platforms jutted out of the hillside like a set of diving boards. Very interesting formations.

💨 South Head — same storm, different hill

Over to South Head, ethel number two for the day. Same howling wind as last weekend but this time with zero people — not one human.

The sort of wind that makes you bend your body just to stay upright.

There was a memorial plaque — a small, human note in all that wind, dedicated to a leading rambler for 40 years.

Didn't hang around much. But the views were still something else.

🐄Cows & Highland Cows — beautiful until they stare

After South Head I dropped down into farm territory — with cows blocking the way! Of course (Peak District rite of passage). I went through them anyway.

At that point I looked at my planned line which was toward Chinley Churn, but I also spotted Eccles Pike sitting there too temptingly near. Checked the ethel app to confirm this is another one I haven't done and made the classic Mira-decision:

“I’m doing it.”

Another carefully planned hike ditched for an extra summit. 🫣

Straight after that decision I had to cross another field of Highland cows! I love them 💞… right up until one fixes its eyes on me. That feels scary, especially when there are no fences between us.

I had already identified where on the dry-stone wall I would climb if diplomacy failed. Admire, assess, take pics and video, escape plan — the Mira Method.

🧭 Eccles Pike — empty top, moving lunch

Climbed Eccles Pike next ethel — still nobody. Windy but with nice bursts of sun.

Ate my sandwich mid-stride as I descended — because sitting is for people doing short walks.

Just continuous forward motion is what I do these days. 😅

🌿The most overgrown path on Earth

Full drop to valley floor, crossed the A6 (always surreal when a big road slices through a hike).

Found a signpost half-swallowed by bushes.

And then a so-called “path” that clearly hasn’t been used since the Roman Empire.

I was pushing through branches and shrubs, no human footprints, no visible trod — then suddenly I burst out of wilderness into a clean tarmac siding like a portal jump.

This was intense. Didn't like it one bit.

🚫 Missing Trig — farmer vs civilisation

Don't I love it when I climb everything. Lose all of it. Climb everything again. 🙈

Climb up Chinley Churn felt so aggressive — my post-hike graph elevation literally shows a V-shaped brutality.

I knew there is a trig before the ethel somewhere there, one from the 88 trigs challenge. I have a few overlapping lists in my head.😂

Then I saw a bright red private land STAY OUT sign on a drystone wall with barbed wire — suspiciously bold.

Checked TrigPointUK — and discovered the farmer has ripped out the trig, 😡re-turfed the area, and trig-baggers are now discussing legal action and a mass trespass.

I stood there in the wind thinking:

“So the trig is gone, the land is hostile, and the reward is… grass?” Decision made: I’m not trespassing for a patch of turf.

❄ Chinley Churn Ethel — winter arrives with intent

Carried on to the Ethel spot — no marker, just coordinates and violent winter-grade wind. Tears streaming from my eyes purely from windchill. Cold like February, sudden, sharp, relentless.

Views were actually excellent — could see the whole circuit — but the wind cancelled any joy. Took the tick and got out fast.