Some thoughts, words and pictures around my minor involvement in fighting the wildfire that impacted the Featherbed Moss area of the Dark Peak.
Geography
The fire impacted the area of the Peak District between Kinder and Bleaklow (and South of the A57 road) bounded by
A57 Snake Pass to the North
Snake Plantations to the East
Ashop Clough to the South
Pennine Way to the West
Origins
Derbyshire Fire and Rescue Service received a 999 call at 2058hrs on Thursday 30th April. Gamekeepers were on scene at 2100hrs. I believe the ignition site to have been in the area marked on the OS map between Nether Gate Clough and Snake Plantations.
Although there is a significant amount of rubbish from campers strewn along the woodland edge, i don’t believe a source was identified. It would be an odd place to camp (the area in Snake Plantation alongside the beck is the the most popular site for ‘wild’ campers in the Peak. It is an area lauded on social media by people parking at Birchin Clough that have left an absolute shithole in the woodland littered with abandoned tents, firepits and human waste.
But that area is well below the area where the fire started.
A word about the Peak District National Park Fire Operations Group aka FOG
The PDNP Fire Operations Group was formed in 1996 after a serious moorland blaze. It brings together a partnership of six fire services (Cheshire, Derbyshire, Greater Manchester, Staffordshire, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire), National Park rangers, National Trust wardens, water companies, major landowners and gamekeepers to draw up fire plans, oversee specialist fire-fighting equipment, raise awareness of moorland fires and the consequences thereof and train for emergencies.
Thursday Night
Elements of the FOG deloyed to Snake Woodland via the vehicle access gate that leads to Saukin Ridge. Thermal drones piloted by keepers, Derbyshire MRT and Eastern Moors Partnership (EMP) rangers were used to assess the situation. The decision was made (by the FRS who have primacy at a wildfire) to not attempt to fight the fire in the dark of the first night.
Friday
By daybreak the smoke could be seen from Manchester and Sheffield. The A57 was closed to traffic. An enormous FOG effort was launched across an enormous swathe of moorland to get a grip of the fire. There was a significant amount of resources, logisitics, FOG partner vehicles, water dumps, welfare facilities and an Incident Control Centre at the top of Snake Pass.
In simple terms, what has burnt has burnt and therefore the effort is put in to the edges of the fire and stopping the spread. The area of the fire had been split in to 4 large sectors and FOG crews with beaters, Scoty Packs (portable water backpacks and hoses), ArgoCat and SofTrak vehicles (carrying 300 – 500 litres each) deployed to the fight. The wind didn’t help. The terrain of deeply sloping cloughed peat moorland made access difficult and time consuming.
On the western edge of the fire the wind and the associated speed of the burn meant that one second you’d be hosing or beating the fire edge and the next all context of space had gone and you were engulfed in smoke. Between daybreak and noon on Friday the fire was spreading quickly.
As the last community to actively start fires on moorland as part of their work in land management, it would only be fair to observe the proficiency of the keepers in attacking the fire line. Many facets of that landscape and weather led to the need of a sort of ‘quick reaction force’ to be acutely aware of the nature of moorland fire and have the mobility and skills to read it and attack. I don’t see eye to eye with keepers on a lot of things but their ability on the fireline was remarkable. Credit where it’s due.
Some point late morning the keepers came up out of Ashop Clough quickly !! noting the wind had changed to a (roughly) southerly – and the fire front tore across the moor in our sector. It was at this point that one of our ArgoCats wouldn’t start. That was an interesting chat 20m from the fire front with a knackered vehicle full of fuel and laden with water. Options discussed included a) run away and leave it b) push it in to one of the leaky dam ponds and come back later c) a circle of people with beaters and scotty packs (and the water hose off the Argo) forming a circle and defending the vehicle ….
Keepers appeared out of the dense smoke on their way out of the clough and offered a tow out and as we were prep’ing that the bloody Argo decided to fire up.
The Fire Operations lead from DFRS called a Tactical Withdrawl and we extracted to the road and a brew from the ‘Sally Army’ truck.
(To misquote Thomas Carlyle in his ‘’History of Friedrich the Second, Called Frederick the Great” …. ‘an army of wildfire fighters marches on sarnies and brews’. The non-stop sustenance support by the chapin the Salvation Army welfare truck for the >100 people involved in tackling the wildfire was very very much appreciated by everyone. Thank you 🙏. )
Tea in hand we watched the fire track across the moor and the helicopter attack its progress with underslung water ‘bombs’.
The wind then abated a bit and we refilled the Argo with water, ‘saddled up’ and headed south down in to to the clough.
It was on this foray that we saw a charred and helpless leveret wandering the burnt moor and also a short eared owl calling in distress.
There was operational updates led by the Incident Commander about every 90 minutes with all FOG partners represented. Drone footage (taken by Derbyshire MRT) was used as a highly effective awareness tool (it wasn’t possible from anywhere (other than in the heli) to get a view of the whole site due to the scale.
More work in the clough fighting the fire edge for most of the rest of the shift until 6pm ish. The various crews of on-call firefighters were arriving from across several counties to keep fighting the fight in to the evening.
The four of us from EMP then signed out, loaded the ArgoCats on to trailers and made our way back to our base on Big Moor. We then washed in the sink, ate a pizza and went back out on firewatch on our own turf.
‘Can You’
‘Can You’ is a phrase from the surveillance world whereby something is happening but you’re not in a position or resourced to deal with it so you offer it up to the wider team. There’s no prizes for trying to do everything yourself nor for losing a subject because your ego is too big to share responsibility. As we were heading down the Hope Valley on our way home a mountain rescue colleague messaged to say there was a campfire near the Eagle Stone on Baslow Edge. He had info’d the farmer. I put a ‘Can You’ out. Damian (the BMC Fire Engagement Ranger) made haste there. A Derbyshire FRS crew on their home from the Snake were inbound. Fire extinguished. Engagement chat had. The team works.
The keepers went to a moorland fire above Bradwell on their way home. Another DFRS crew went to a storage container alight in countryside near Hathersage on their way home.
Some of my EMP colleagues out on night firewatch had had about 3hrs kip in about 40 hrs by this point. Safety first. To bed.
Saturday
And so tired bodies made our way to EMP base to prep the vehicles and equipment for the second day before driving through to Snake Summit.
The second full day of the fire resembled some sort of sci-fi film. We traversed the scorched moonscape in Argocat all-terrain vehicles taking care not to tip in to the deep groughs. Alongside other partner members from FOG we helped to extinguish the visible areas of fire and smoke.
Once our 500 litres of onboard water was used we’d traverse back across ‘the moon’ to the A57 Snake Summit to resupply .
There were some safety issues today, before the police managed to close the road, with the usual suspects treating the A57 as a race track whilst it was being concurrently used as the Incident Control centre and logistics hub for a multi agency incident. Having two fingers waved at you whilst asking someone to slow down so they don’t either kill a firefighter or drive their pride and joy in to a lot of tons of fire tender seemed to be the norm.
Later in the day we would use the thermal drone to identify hot spots in the groughs around Salvin Ridge and towards and along the tree line, and then go ‘all in’ with hoses and spades to expose the hot layer of peat and soak it. Oftentimes the moor had burnt out but the underlip of the grough edges was still hot – some we recorded at over 300c. We ended up quite feral, covered in peat and often disappearing in to 10ft deep groughs on missions against hotspots. We did this for several hours before calling it a day as the evening shift of retained firefighters arrived on scene once more.
Back to the Eastern Moors base. Wash in a sink. Microwave meal and a milkshake. Sort vehicles. Out on evening patrol.
Sunday
The persistent spell of rain for ~20 hours which started at ~8pm on Saturday will help dampen everything down. At some point the Incident Commander will hand the site back to the National Trust. I would expect that (even despite the rains) a few thermal drone supported teams of rangers will head up on Monday to identify areas of heat in the peat and apply water. Fire in deep heat can resurface weeks or months later as flame.
Effort
One of our small team from EMP reviewed the medical data off his Garmin after a day (12hrs) of wildfire fighting on the Friday.
A pulse above 110 for most of the day and peaking at about 180
>6000 calories expended
about 32000 steps done
O2 SATS averaged out at about 94% for the day.
Maybe we could start a new fitness fad called Grough Fit ™️
Observations
1. One of the senior fire officers made two telling observations
That was one of the fastest moving fire fronts (around late morning on Friday) he had ever seen
and
Everybody had had put in some exceptional amounts of graft on Friday to get on top of that fire
2. Backgrounds, politics, organisations and viewpoints were set aside and everyone mucked in with everyone and grafted hard. Everyone had a voice. People helped people. One cause.
3. A firefighter walking across the charred moonscape of Salvin Ridge carrying a tray of pink iced doughnuts for the crews 👌.
4. There were people within a kilometre of this fire ‘wild camping’ with fire whilst this fire was ongoing.
5. The cost to the taxpayer (probably 40+ emergency services vehicles there on Friday plus their crews), public (closure of A57 for best part of 2 days), FOG partners (as an example the helicopter was £2500 an hour) from these fires is immense.
6. The cost to nature is horrific.
7. The politics of why landscape scale fires are occuring more and more frequently in the uplands of the UK, and particularly in the Peak District, are obfuscated and complicated. As ever, the mainstream news outlets or the accounts of he (or she) who shouts loudest on social media are the last places to go to understand the issues.
‘The plural of anecdote isn’t data’ – Guy Shrubsole
8. The charred leveret will live long in my memory.
9. The stress and sadness of the Head Ranger for this part of the National Trust estate was worn on her sleeve and etched in to the sweat and grime on her face.
10. Thanks to my colleagues for having my back, coping with my incompetence and for the dark humour of yet another ‘EMP adventure’.
11. Ear worm of the fire was On The Road Again by Willie Nelson. No idea why. Driving across ‘the moon’ singing this ….
12. Handheld thermal readers for close-up hotspotting. Small drones for a quick heads up and safety. Highly capable drones for situational awareness, thermal mapping, safety, security and efficiency. Most importantly for keeping the professionals and trained volunteers that form the FOG safe. Get on the tech super-highway. It keeps people alive.
12. Wildfires in the Peak District are caused by humans. There are various climatic reasons why their severity may be greater but the cause of ignition directly involves a human being. Wildfires in the Peak District are caused by humans.
13. None of this wildfire or the last wildfire or the next wildfire changes anything.
Drone imagery giving context to the scale of the fire …
©️ The Path Less Travelled 2026. Some content herein used with permission from Eastern Moors Partnership. No part to be used, published or reproduced without prior consent in place from the author.
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