Burbage Moor is predominately open moorland with heather and moor grass.  Areas of complex rock detail and sometimes steep detailed contour features, together with the central woodland, whose runnablity is increasing year by year, provide a variety of orienteering challenges.  There are many transient sheep tracks which can be helpful and the deer are starting to encroach from Big Moor, which may lead to more tracks.  The quality of the orienteering is high enough to allow level A events such as the Compassport Cup Final 2010 and National Event/Senior Home International in 2006.

Burbage has a long history that dates back at least 4,000 years from the prehistoric sites such as Carl Wark hillfort, burial barrows and cairn fields, through medieval packhorse routes and iron smelting sites to centuries of millstone making. Much more recently the moors were used as training grounds and the location of an aircraft decoy defence during World War 2.