Along the Edges There's Stanage, Gardom's, Birchen Edge with its battleships; the fine sweep of Froggatt, Curbar and Baslow, remote Derwent Edge and away up in the north-west, Axe Edge. Choose an Edge and find out more. There are over 500 climbing routes on Stanage Edge, where one sheer gritstone face is named "The Unconquerable". A Roman road known as the Long Causeway crossed over Stanage Edge and the moors up here are treacherous in deep snow - in December 1697 a man froze to death "coming from Sheffield in a snow". Stanedge Pole - for some reason spelt differently from the edge, has guided travellers for over four centuries. The tall wooden pole has been replaced from time to time but its supporting rock is carved with dates from the year 1550. Countless numbers of millstones were quarried and worked below the edge and many still lie scattered on the higher slopes. The curious Buck Stone with its "pin man" carving is worth looking for. Along the summit of the edge is a series of small rock basins only a few centimetres deep, engraved with a number from 1 to 100. Research by Peak Park rangers confirmed that they were made by 19th century gamekeepers to collect rainwater for the red grouse. In dry periods, local children carried water up to the small hollows to keep them full. The basins were numbered so that landowners were not charged for carving any holes twice. Only the first 34 basins are on access land. Gardom's Edge, north-east of Baslow, has recently become a major visitor attraction. Around 1,000 people came to watch the progress of a three-year archaeological excavation carried out jointly by the Peak District National Park and the University of Sheffield. An outstanding example of a "cup and ring" stone, over 4,000 years old, was rescued and copied. Five gritstone quarries have been worked along Gardom's Edge, leaving many unfinished millstones which broke during manufacture. Three stone cairns, known as the Three Men, are the subject of two different tales. One version tells how a father and his two sons, possibly packhorse men, perished up here in a blizzard. The other story goes that three Yorkshire clergymen were returning home after attending a funeral at Eyam in April 1740 and were overcome by a violent snowstorm. In the 1930s, the cairns were regularly pulled down, sometimes by gamekeepers, but were rebuilt by ramblers and local people. Birchen Edge is within walking distance of Gardom's Edge. Here stands Nelson's Monument. It took London 60 years to erect a monument to Nelson after his death in 1805 but this gritstone obelisk was erected in 1810. A short distance away are three large natural rocks shaped like the prows of ships. Each one is carved with the name of a British fighting ship - Victory, Defiance and Royal Soverin (sic). A short distance from Birchen Edge is the Eric Byne camp-site, named in memory of a climbing pioneer and author of books about rock climbing in the Peak. The heather moors behind Birchen Edge are designated access land. Prior to access agreements, the walks along Baslow, Curbar and Froggatt Edges were not open to the public as the land belonged to the Duke of Rutland. The tracks, known as the Duke's Drives, were well guarded by gamekeepers. According to a 1920s handbook of Sheffield Clarion Ramblers, any attempt to walk along the edges was "faced with human impediments, and objurgation". Today, ramblers are free to gaze up at Baslow Edge from the old bridleway below, or to walk along the summit.There are two well-known landmarks up here, the Eagle Stone and the Wellington Monument, a sturdy gritstone cross commemorating the "Iron Duke". A more humble and tragic memorial exists near the bridleway below Baslow Edge. These are the Cundy graves, where a family who died of the plague was buried in 1632. Five flat slabs lie on the ground, carved with the initials of Thomas Cundy, his wife Ada, and their children, Olive, Nellie and Thomas. They lived at nearby Grislowfields Farm. Curbar Edge is another mecca for climbers, with routes up to 70 ft (21m) high. Climbers looking for "a few soft touches" have been advised to move further along to Froggatt Edge. There are further hints to beginners in the names of certain climbs on Curbar Edge, such as Avalanche Wall and the Eliminate Wall. The edge is littered with Bronze Age clearance cairns and many prehistoric sites have been identified on the moor, including stone circles, settlements and cemetery features. To the north of Curbar Edge is Froggatt Edge. The summit track was formerly a millstone road made by quarrymen in the 17th/18th centuries. The main track later became one of the Duke's Drives, mentioned earlier. By the late 1920s, ramblers were increasingly frustrated at being denied access to what they saw as "one of the finest stretches of scenery outside the Lake District". Once Froggatt Edge was opened up to the public, it attracted a devoted following of rock climbers. They have a choice of climbs from "easy" to merely "difficult" and on to "hard very severe". A long stretch of gritstone moorland to the east was settled in prehistoric times and the Stoke Flat stone circle is only a few yards from the main footpath. Anyone who saw the view from Derwent Edge 100 years ago would not recognise it today. At that time a river flowed along Derwent Dale, winding through Derwent village, with its lovely hall and scattered farms, and on past the village of Ashopton. Now both villages lie beneath the waters of the Upper Derwent Reservoirs. Today the views from Derwent Edge take in a man-made landscape of lakes and forests. Grazing rights on the moorland above the reservoirs are mainly let to sheep farmers and there are many square miles of public access areas. A short distance from Back Tor is a cairn named the Lost Lad. It is said to commemorate a shepherd boy who lived in Derwent village with his widowed mother. One harsh winter's day, he set out to find his missing sheep but was caught in a blinding snowstorm. In the deepening snow and now quite lost, he scratched the words "lost lad" on a large rock before curling up beneath it for shelter. He never returned home. Three months later, in the spring, some shepherds noticed the pathetic message and found the boy's body. From that time, a passing shepherd always placed a stone near the spot in his memory, and the stones gradually built up into this cairn. To the north of Derwent Edge lies Howden Moor, where in the winter of 1953/4 a shepherd named Joseph Tagg perished when he got lost in the snow. His sheepdog, Tip, kept vigil by his body for 15 weeks and although she survived for a year afterwards, was buried on the moors the following winter. Subscriptions came from all over the world to pay for Tip's memorial, which stands at the roadside by Derwent Reservoir. Many tales bring the past to life on Axe Edge, south-west of Buxton. In the summer of 1942, a party of Royal Sappers and Miners set up their equipment here to take observations. They had clear sightings of powerful reflectors set up on the top of Lincoln Cathedral, on a high hill in Nottinghamshire and even on Mount Snowdon, 90 miles (145km) away. Old packhorse routes cross the Axe Edge moors. Chert from Great Longstone was taken to North Staffordshire this way, with crates of pottery coming from the opposite direction. A house beside one of the tracks was named Royal Cottage because Charles I was hidden here from Roundhead soldiers, so local legend has it. The village of Flash, just south of Axe Edge End, claims the title of the highest village in the Britain at 1,518 ft (463m) above sea-level. Some of the scattered farms described by writer W.H. Hudson in 1913 have been abandoned now. He found it difficult to believe that families could make a living up here and he wrote of "the meanest-looking, most unhomelike farms you will find in England". As for the inhabitants - "though they appear to be a contented, they are not a happy-looking or a lively people. They have colourless faces and for good looks or brightness or intelligence compare badly with the inhabitants of the adjoining districts ... the children have the brightness proper to their time of life, which makes their dirty little faces shine; but it is rare to find a pretty one." From the 16th/19th centuries, an even poorer way of life existed around Grin Low at the northern end of Axe Edge, where limestone was quarried and burned in kilns. The vast hillocks of lime waste, hardened by the weather, were hollowed out to make living quarters for the workers. These strange little homes were kept warm by heat from the nearby kilns. Some dwellings had just one round room with a chimney but others had as many as five rooms and housed large families. Some of them laid their roofs with turf, in which grew ferns and thistles - occasionally grazed by a cow. Coal was mined from around Axe Edge from about 1600. The mines had been abandoned by the early 20th century, although some coal was extracted in the First World War and again during the General Strike of 1926. The second-highest pub in England, The Cat & Fiddle, is visible from Axe Edge; it stands 1,690ft (515m) above sea-level. More Pictures Natural Landmarks