From its northern tip, looking south, White Edge looks like a wave of rock, brown earth and heather. The wave crest is grey gritstone, the shrubland looks like undulating brown swell and the sky stretches out across the world.
At one time, White Edge would have been at the bottom of the sea. Exposure to the air and the wind and the crush of tectonic plates have made it look like a still, earthen model of the sea’s undulating roof.
The edge itself is small – particularly when you compare it to the others – but that means that you need to focus your eyes more intently to get the details. When you do this, you get drawn into the finer points and the overall construction – the shape if you like – recedes into the bit of your mind that gives you dreams.
I’m reminded that White Edge houses adders at its eastern base and that a herd of deer, no two sets of antlers the same and fur the colour of the earth and the moors, graze and wander its contours all year round. When the sun rises and sets, crossing White Edge in a semi circle from east to west, it does so over a wave of earth and mud, populated by rare snakes and the oldest herd of deer in England.
I don’t particularly enjoy walking up and down White Edge, but running from the northern end to the southern tip, all the way to Gardoms, is one of my favourite ways to spend an afternoon or an early morning. All of the way down to the grassy lowland at the end, the trail snakes and bifurcates over the soil swells, forcing you to pay attention to where your feet land. The brown moorland and heather flash past for miles and its easy for your mind to drift.
The only time you need to pay attention to the path that you take on White Edge is at the start or at the end. There is a trig point around halfway down, but the trail only splits into several for a few hundred feet and each path reunites with the main trail eventually. Unless you want to stop at the trig, you can hoon past on any track that takes your fancy. At either end however, you will need to know where the trail you are on will take you.
I’ve never seen anything white on White Edge. Or for that matter anywhere except a computer screen. All “whites” in Nature are greys or very light tints of other hues and colours. Next time you see a seagull, try and match their white feathers to a soulless, digital white and you’ll see what I mean. A perfect, bright and brilliant white just doesn’t exist in the natural world.
Gardom’s looks like the moon and feels haunted. As a place to finish the southward dash from White Edge’s picturesque beginnings, its wonderful. To leave the grasslands that spill from the trails at the end of White Edge, you’ll find yourself in a space that feels wide open and in touch with the sky.
There’s a road to cross before you get there and that can break the spell – the slightly mystical sense that’s easy to encounter around here. Anything to do with cars will do that.
When you’ve completed the pull up to the trees that mark the start of Gardoms, the atmosphere strikes out for leftfield. Leaving the trees it seems quieter, even when there are people there, which is rare and the wind there seems like a simulation. The top is strewn with rocks and boulders for some reason and its almost impossible to run through. It feels like you should be on the ground, but in fact you’re actually very high. Off to the right is a tall crag with a huge drop and occasionally climber’s disembodied voices drift up on the wind, seemingly from nowhere and birds of prey hang in the updrafts, their feathers ruffling in a wind that you can’t feel. I love the place, but for some reason I can’t stay there for too long on my own.
