From nearby Hollingworth Moor, this gaping maw in the south Pennines is one part of an extravagant panorama unveiled from this undulating walk in the quiet fringes of the national park. It’s an area of deep cloughs spangled by strings of reservoirs and looming moorland edges, and threaded by packhorse trails and quarry roads – all of it now access land.
[1] At Hobson Moor Road in Roe Cross (SJ988966), take the path into the old quarry, forking left at the redundant stile and rising to the left of the quarry-face before bending right to a narrow iron handgate just above the quarry. Use this and start a climb across rough moorland, with a fence on your left. Ignore the next handgate and in half-a-mile you’ll reach a corner and fingerpost. Use the walker’s gate, left, and trace the track to a junction of tracks just beyond the pylons. Turn right to the triangulation pillar at the top of Hollingworthall Moor – a modest 399m/1309ft but an extraordinary panoramic viewpoint over 8 counties.
[2] Turn right from the pillar to soon reach a fence. Climb the nearby stile and join the distinct path past the metal pole, over another stile to a walled corner high above the reservoirs in Swineshaw Clough. Climb the stile and keep parallel to a wall up on your right to cross a stile through a falling cross wall. Continue to a fingerpost and handgate, pass through and go half-left, aiming for the distant pylon standing to the right of Higher Swineshaw reservoir. A couple of waymarked wall-gaps lead into a short old walled track, then continue to a stand of straggly-looking sycamores beside fallen walls and a fingerpost beneath a tree. Go left here to the dam.
[3] Retrace your steps a few paces and take the Pennine Bridleway left for Tintwistle. Remain with this through another gate and beneath pylons. At the waymarked junction just before a wall, go left along the Pennine Bridleway to find another bridlegate. Take this and trace the rough road beside the wall on your right, dropping into the defile of Ogden Clough.
[4] Cross the footbridge and turn right up the steep track to the sharp bend, use the ladder stile on the right and turn left at the fingerpost. Pass right of the pylon, then through the second gap in the wall (a waymarked stile). Continue gently downhill past an offset wall corner to a fingerpost. Put the wall on your right to reach a fine corner and gate just before a large barn. Go through the gate and immediately take the stile on your right, then keep the wall to your left to use a stile near a lone hawthorn. Keep ahead alongside the ditch for around 100m and then drift half-right to a stile and the nearby Devil’s Bridge across Ogden Brook.
[5] Cross the bridge and climb steeply to a Swallows Wood Nature Reserve board in 100m. Turn right onto the narrow, braided path through birchwoods, then above a tinkling beck. Cross the water and keep uphill, over a stile to reach a track below firwoods. Go left through the gate and in 20 paces join a thin path rising slightly right, away from the main track and through a wall-gap, before reaching the top edge of a copse. From the near corner, drift slightly right to a gateside stile beyond sycamores, then through further stiles and handgates below a wooden barn to reach a farm road at housing beyond a band of trees. Turn left along this road, then right along the driveway. At the next T-junction go ahead along the ‘Private Road’ and follow this past remote houses. Beyond a gateway this drive becomes a tarred lane, which will bring you back to the start.