[1] Turn right from the car park (SK110554), right again for Wetton Mill and then left at the T-junction. In 50m, fork left on the walled track. Beyond a gate, use the waymarked stile right onto a distinct path around the head of a sharp valley, then right through a handgate to Thor’s Cave. This vast cliff-face eye-socket has given up countless artefacts, from the bones of cave bears to Neolithic burials. Head down the steps into the valley, keeping left for Ladyside to cross a footbridge over the River Manifold to a tarred trail.
[2] Turn right on the Manifold Track. Between 1904 and 1934 this was a narrow-gauge railway rattling beside the secluded rivers Manifold and Hamps, linking Hulme End with the standard-gauge network at Waterhouses and carrying milk and curious tourists. Cross the road directly into a lane, soon crossing a bridge over the Manifold. In drier months there’s no river here, just a green stream of gigantic butterbur leaves. The water sinks through fissures in the limestone riverbed and flows deep underground, re-emerging at Ilam, 8km/5 miles downstream. Continue to the bridge at Wetton Mill.
[3] Cross the bridge and fork left on the rough lane to Dale Farm. At the farmyard, turn left (signed for Hulme End) along a gated track. At the T-junction, turn left, cross the river and then fork right for Wetton. At the bend in 100m, turn right, rejoining the old railway. Looking back you’ll see the old rail tunnel – now a single-track road. Remain with the cycle track for a kilometre. To your right, Ecton Hill is pockmarked with old workings – remains of what were perhaps the planet’s richest copper mines 250 years ago.
[4] At the lane crossing, there’s the option of continuing ahead on the trail for a further mile to Hulme End, where the old station has displays about the railway and mining heritage, plus a nearby shop and tea room. Otherwise, turn right, then look half-right from the adjacent junction for the potholed track (a path signed for ‘Top of Ecton & Wetton’), climbing past mine-related housing. Beyond the last house and arch, go left off the stile onto the very steep path through wall-side scrub. Continue up the grassy slope to old workings and a barn, which is actually the winding-engine house for the former Ecton Deep mine. Turn right below the wall (don’t use the handgate) and use the nearby stile. Continue half-right on the waymarked concessionary path to the trig pillar topping Ecton Hill, where a panorama of the White Peak awaits. Look for a distant, small concrete wall-side shelter around 500m away and head for this, beyond re-built stone walling. You’ll then pass further mining heritage to reach a tarred lane.
[5] Go left to the hairpin bend and turn right here on the continuing lane to its end at Pepper Inn (once a beer-house, later a smallpox hospital). Use the squeeze stile opposite, cross a slab bridge and continue along the wall to your right around Wetton Hill. In around 500m, cut across a long field (as waymarked), following the path to the stub-end of a track dropping into Wetton.