THE ROACHES | PEAK DISTRICT - Full hiking tour & what to expect!

Coming up this week, we're at the Roaches in the Staffordshire Peak District. Home to incredible rock formations and climbing, we're showing you the incredible sights, both natural and man-made. We'll scale the highest heights and we'll find out just what's lurking in the waters of a bottomless pool. What's up guys, welcome back to the channel. My name is Kyle and I'm Hayley and today we've come back out into the Peak District to a spot called the Roaches. So for those of you who watched our Ludge Church vlog, we ended up at a place called Ramshaw Rocks which is pretty close to here and we said we're always going to come back and we're going to do the Roaches. So we're out today, it's November, feels a bit cold, it's definitely proper Peak District-y weather today. But we're going to show you around, we're going to... I know, it slipped over. We're going to show you around, we're going to show you what you can expect when you come to the Roaches. So we're starting off this morning by scaling Hen Cloud which comes in at 1,345 feet above sea level. So it's a pretty high vantage point, should give us some pretty nice views of the area so we can show you guys what you can expect to see when you come to the Roaches. Why is it called Hen Cloud? Because apparently it looks like a hen roosted. I can't see it but it's nice. Looks like a big old chicken, apparently. So far so good, it's not too bad getting up here. It's starting to get a little bit windy which might be picking up on the camera a bit. We have had a bit of rain recently so it's quite slippy underfoot. If you are going to come after it's been a bit wet just wear some decent walking boots and you should be all right. Right so we made it to the top of Hen Cloud and it's only taken us what like five, ten minutes to get up here and it's our first time coming so I'd say it was fairly easy to walk up to. There's some boggy bits and then some like paved bits so I think it's a fairly easy walk to do. And apparently on a clear day you can see the peaks of Snowdonia mountain range in the distance. Unlike today. Yeah it's a bit it's a bit misty today. Right so the plan now is to head back over that way we're going to head up to the other gritstone it's a little bit windy. Right so the plan now is to head back up over to the other gritstone edge we're going to show you the rest of the roaches. We've got so many little bits and bobs that we want to show you guys so we're going to crack on and get over that way. And boy is it windy. Right so here's a fun fact for you this area in and around the roaches was once known for wallabies. Yeah that's what I said I said wallabies as in wallabies in Australia. There was a private zoo that released them back in World War II and they just came out of there they hung out they established themselves for a little bit but the last ones were seen in the 1990s and no one's seen any since. But if you come to the roaches in the Peak District keep your eye out you never know you might see some wallabies. So we've just made our way down Hencloud and we're heading back uphill because there's a pool and apparently there's another Peak District legendary mermaid up there. Apparently let's go find out. The sun's finally come out as well so we can keep our long-running established fair weather YouTube lies alive. So on our way up to the top we've spotted an abandoned building which is out sort of in the moorland and I've seen pictures of this on Instagram. I've seen a few other people exploring it but we've never been to check it out so we're going to check it out and take you guys inside so can have a look. Look at that, an old fireplace. Shame it's been littered in. Oh hell of a view though. So this is inside the abandoned cottage up here at the roaches you can see that all the walls are actually made of grit stone as well so it was almost definitely made from the materials that were up here but it is very much a ruin now. Yeah it's the bare bones of a house. But we've been looking for a fixer-upper. This could be this could be perfect. The view is amazing look at this view from this window. Amazing. Definitely. Amazing view. It's so strange to be in someone's old house as well. Yeah quite different. If you are going to come here it's freely open you don't have to you know there's no doors or locked gates or anything you can just walk straight in but do be careful because there's a lot of like shards of wood and there's nails and stuff on the floor so probably not one for the kids but it's cool to at least come and have a look. Right onwards and upwards we're going to leave the cottage behind us it's definitely worth taking a quick look if you stay safe when you're coming here. We're going to head up to the top now and see if we can check out that little pool that we told you about. So we're headed up to the top and the roaches are well known for their rock formations. As we get up closer to the top you'll see that they start to get into sort of weird and wonderful shapes because they're made of grit stone so they're quite easily eroded especially when it's wet and windy up here but it also makes it pretty interesting for climbing and the roaches is a super popular destination for climbing. We've seen quite a few haven't we this morning so yeah. It's turned into a bit of a make your own path hasn't it. Okay so we are now definitely getting up towards the top. I told you the rocks get a little bit weird up here. Almost reminds me a little bit the rocks up at Kinderskout. They're definitely sort of whipped into weird shapes. If you've not seen that vlog we did go to Kinderskout. I'll put links to that in the description below. Right so off to our side is Doxy Pool and this is up at the top of the roaches. Now apparently it's bottomless and apparently there's a mermaid in there as well according to legend. How does it even work out like that? Like if it's bottomless how is there a mermaid at the bottom? Yeah I don't know but we're going to put it to the test today. We have a dive case for our Insta360. We've got a camera in this. We've just seen someone wild swimming in there. We won't be doing that. We're going to send this down see if we can catch any mermaids. Okay let's give this a go. See what's at the bottom. You guys are going under. That's literally the bottom there. That's not deep at all. That's like... Okay I think that was probably considered a fail. You guys will see that footage before we do. I can confirm I hit the bottom pretty quickly. I don't think Doxy Pool is bottomless. You heard it here first. So once you get up to the top, the path's actually pretty straight. It's quite flat so there's no incline, no hard work left to do and you get some incredible views. But it's worth saying you want to stick to the path up here because they're actively trying to preserve the peat. They've got some fences that are cording off certain areas trying to get you to not step on those because peat actually takes thousands of years to grow. It grows about one millimetre per year so they're trying to preserve it as best they can. So if you do come up here, stick to the path. Okay this is it. This is the tippy top of the roaches. Right so that is the the trig point bagged. We've done the highest point of the roaches and we're going to head back down now. Yeah we want to show you a little something else. It's the Don Williams Memorial Hut especially for climbers so check that out. Okay so we've dropped down off the top now. There's almost no wind down here which is nice. It's a lot warmer because underneath the edge like we said there's the the memorial hut that we want to show you. It's an interesting little feature here at the roaches. But we've come into sort of like some really old pines, really twisted gnarled looking things. Pretty interesting spot for landscape photography. There's still a few climbers down under here as well but it's a whole different feel to being up on the top and being exposed. It's another nice little spot if you're going to come to the roaches. Okay so this is the Don Williams Memorial Hut. It's a climbing hut. It's Williams with an n and not with an m which we might have made a mistake about earlier. I believe it's private. You can't actually get into it. You can't sort of visit it but it's really cool. It's a really old little building just sort of nestled in the side of the rocks. So Don Williams himself was a pretty famous climber and he started climbing here at the roaches. And this this little hut is sort of memorial hut for him. I think he went on to climb bigger mountains maybe like Everest and stuff. Don't fact check me on that though. But the roaches itself just remains so popular with climbing today. We've just walked past how many climbers would you say? There was like tens of them yeah probably 30-40 climbers all across the edges. So it's a very popular climbing spot if you're into that shout out Tom Toppix. Right guys that's gonna about do it for today's vlog. Hopefully you enjoyed our little jaunt around the roaches. It's another really popular spot here on the Staffordshire side of the Peak District. So if you enjoyed this video please give us a big thumbs up and if you like the look of our faces and you want to see us in the next vlog hit that subscribe button too. Don't forget to hit the little bell notification icon that way you're going to be notified the next time we upload another Peak District adventure. So we'll hopefully catch you guys in the next one. Bye! So if you enjoyed the video please give us a big thumbs up and don't forget to hit the subscribe button as well. That feels wrong is that the normal outro we do? I don't know.