The walk starts from the main car park on Cross Street in Castleton (S33 8WH), next to the Peak District National Park Centre. It is run by High Peak Borough Council and has 133 car spaces and 8 disabled spaces. Charges apply 24 hours a day, every day: £1.80 for up to 1 hour, £2.90 for up to 2 hours, £4.50 for up to 4 hours, £6.80 for over 4 hours (up to 10 hours) or £7.90 for 24 hours, so for this walk get the over 4 hours ticket. Pay with coins at the machines, which don't give change, or with the PayByPhone app. There are public toilets at the car park. Check the latest prices here.

The top of Lose Hill has a second name: Ward's Piece. It is named after George Herbert Bridges Ward, known as Bert, who was born in central Sheffield in 1876 and worked as an engineer in a steelworks. In September 1900 he put an advert in The Clarion, a socialist newspaper, inviting people to join him on a walk around Kinder Scout. Fourteen turned up, eleven men and three women, and from that day grew the Sheffield Clarion Ramblers, thought to be the first rambling club for working people.

The club became the leading voice for the public's right to walk on the moors of the Dark Peak. Ward took part in an illegal mass trespass on Bleaklow as early as 1907. From 1902 he wrote the club's handbooks, which grew from a single card into small books full of local history, place names and geology, and he even persuaded the Ordnance Survey to correct some of the names on its maps. In 1926 he founded the Sheffield and District Federation, one of the branches that went on to form the Ramblers.

In 1945 the Federation bought the top of Lose Hill and gave it to Ward in thanks for his life's work. The plaque put up to mark the gift describes "this summit and 54.5 acres of land around it". Ward then handed the land on to the National Trust. In 1957 the University of Sheffield gave him an honorary degree for his work for walkers, and he died later that year, on 14 October. In 2018 local Ramblers gave £10,000 towards repairing the Great Ridge path between Mam Tor and Lose Hill, the path you walk on this hike.

The best known ghost story in Castleton belongs to Winnats Pass, the gorge you walk down at the end of this hike. In 1862 William Wood told it in his Tales and Traditions of the High Peak. In April 1758, he wrote, a young couple, remembered as Allan and Clara, rode through Castleton on two fine horses, heading for the chapel at Peak Forest. Couples could marry there without the usual banns, so it was a favourite place for runaways, and Clara's family were said to be against the match.

In the village their rich clothes caught the eye of a group of miners. As the couple rode up the Winnats, five of the men seized them, dragged them into a barn, robbed them and killed them. The bodies were hidden, and the horses were later found, still saddled and bridled, near the Winnats. About ten years afterwards, miners sinking a shaft found two skeletons, which were thought to be those of the missing couple.

The story says the killers did not escape their crime. One fell from a crag in the Winnats, one was killed by a falling stone near the spot where the murder took place, one went mad and another hanged himself. The last, named in later tellings as James Ashton, is said to have confessed on his deathbed. Legend has it that on dark nights you can still hear the couple begging for their lives in the pass.