There are landscapes arranged not so much by geography as by material, and the country between the Staffordshire Moorlands and the Derbyshire Dales belongs to this order of things, for here the ground divides between the dark gritstone of the moorland edges and the pale Carboniferous limestone of the dales. West of the limestone plateau, gritstone breaks through peat and heather in walls and towers, while farther east limestone has been opened by rivers, quarrymen and vanished seas, leaving cliffs in wooded ravines and old workings. The change is immediate to the climber. Gritstone asks for friction and trust upon rounded holds; limestone offers pockets, edges and grooves dissolved by water over immense periods. To climb across this country is to pass between two physical languages.

The most commanding expression of the Staffordshire country is found at the Roaches, whose escarpment rises above the fields like exposed masonry. On mornings when cloud lies in the valleys and the farms below have disappeared, the crag seems almost to have been deposited upon the ridge by forces which have since withdrawn. The estate extends across heather, blanket bog and rough pasture, and the climbing ground is also a refuge for curlew, red grouse and other upland birds whose movements cross the invisible lines drawn upon the stone. This is easy to forget when ropes hang from the cliff, yet the rock is never merely sporting ground. It belongs equally to weather, wildlife, farming and human memory.

The walk towards the cliff passes Rockhall Cottage, now the Don Whillans Memorial Hut, above which the rock rises in tiers, roofs and broken walls. To those who have never climbed, these cliffs may appear unreadable, but the climber learns to see within them another map. A fissure becomes a possible line, a groove a place to stand, a constriction somewhere to place protection, and a ledge scarcely wider than a boot edge a point of rest. The route exists before it is climbed, but only as a proposition, a faint line of thought running upward through passages which cannot be understood from below. What appears blank may hold ripples and changes in texture, while what looks straightforward may contain a rounded crack where the feet must be trusted more than the hands.

Climbing at the Roaches reaches back into the early twentieth century, when access could be uncertain and the cliffs belonged to an estate culture shaped by gamekeepers and private ground. In 1951 Joe Brown and Don Whillans met there and climbed together, beginning one of the most celebrated partnerships in British mountaineering. Much of the climbing culture of the Peak grew from Manchester, Sheffield, Stoke-on-Trent and the industrial towns surrounding the hills. Climbers travelled by train, bus, bicycle or motorcycle, carrying heavy ropes and improvised equipment from terraces and factories into a landscape which, though close, belonged to another order of experience. The Alps remained distant and expensive, but the gritstone edges could be reached within a weekend, allowing an expedition to be compressed into a single day.

Beyond the main escarpment lies Hen Cloud, rising from the fields with an architectural severity, while southward Ramshaw Rocks form a more fantastical landscape, including the Winking Man, whose profile appears and disappears from the road. Gritstone also carries an industrial memory easily overlooked when the edges are described simply as natural places. Across the Peak it was quarried for millstones, building stone and grindstones, and abandoned wheels still lie beneath several escarpments, some complete beneath bracken and moss, others only partly cut from the parent rock. These unfinished stones preserve labour in suspension. The workers and industries have gone, but the intended shape remains. The climber placing a hand upon gritstone therefore touches not only geology but the raw material of an industrial system whose traces survive in quarry faces, old tracks and scattered wheels.

The passage from gritstone to limestone is felt strongly in the Manifold Valley, where the plateau gives way and the road descends between pale cliffs. At Beeston Tor the rock rises above the river in a tall, pocketed wall quite different from the broken tiers of the Roaches. The climbing is longer and more sustained, and the holds have been formed by water acting upon limestone over vast periods. Grooves run down the face, pockets open where the stone has dissolved, and plants take root in inaccessible recesses. The caves at the foot of the tor contain evidence of much earlier human occupation, so that archaeological time, geological time and the brief duration of a climb are held together. A climber may spend twenty minutes on a pitch laid down in a vanished sea hundreds of millions of years ago, yet during the ascent that history contracts into the hollow found by the hand and the edge tested by the foot.

Eastward, above the Derwent Valley, Froggatt and Curbar return the traveller to gritstone. Here the cliffs stand above wooded slopes, villages and roads, and the old routes bear the polish of innumerable hands and boots. At Froggatt the climber may face a slab whose difficulty lies in the absence of anything obvious to grasp. Progress is made through balance, friction and careful transfer of weight, and the movement, when performed well, is quiet and economical. The difficulty lies in continuing while fear alters the body, stiffening the legs and causing the hands to grip holds which require almost no grip. Curbar feels sterner, its cracks and walls concentrating the difficulties of something much larger into a few demanding metres, while around Stoney Middleton the pale walls of former quarries have become another climbing landscape, part industrial ruin and part place of renewal.

Every climbing place is fragile. Heather, peat, nesting birds, archaeological remains and the rock itself can be damaged by careless use; popular routes become polished, paths widen and fire can erase vegetation which took decades to establish. Access is therefore never merely permission but an arrangement requiring restraint. Perhaps this is why the most memorable days are not always those of the hardest ascent. They may be days when cloud moved below the Roaches, when rain darkened Curbar, or when nothing was climbed because the stone remained wet. Climbing is often described as an escape from ordinary life, but here it seems more like an intensified return to material things: weather, weight, fear, friction, fatigue, companionship and time. At evening the ropes are pulled down, the climbers descend towards the road, and the cliff returns to shadow, holding the day’s movements without any obligation to preserve them.