The Peak District became Britain’s first national park in 1951, and its location is the whole point: it sits between Manchester, Sheffield, Derby and Stoke, with around 20 million people living within an hour’s travel. It was designated to give industrial populations somewhere to breathe.
Two very different halves
- The Dark Peak — the northern and higher part. Millstone grit, blanket peat bog, heather moorland and dramatic edges — long escarpments of gritstone that are among the best rock climbing in Britain. Bleak, exposed and genuinely serious in bad weather. Kinder Scout at 636m is the highest point, and its summit plateau is a maze of peat groughs that has defeated a great many navigators.
- The White Peak — the southern limestone country. Green dales, clear rivers, dry stone walls, caves and gorges. Softer, prettier and considerably more walkable.
The contrast is immediate and geological, and you can drive between the two in twenty minutes.
The Kinder Scout trespass
The single most consequential act of civil disobedience in British countryside history. On 24 April 1932, several hundred ramblers — mostly young working-class men and women from Manchester and Sheffield — deliberately walked onto Kinder Scout, then private grouse moor with no public access.
They were met by gamekeepers, there were scuffles, and five men were arrested and jailed, one for four months. The severity of the sentences caused widespread outrage and turned a local protest into a national cause.
The direct consequences were the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949, the designation of the Peak District two years later, and eventually the right to roam legislation of 2000. There is a plaque at Bowden Bridge quarry where the walkers set off.
What to do
- Stanage Edge — three miles of gritstone escarpment, and the most popular climbing crag in Britain. Also a straightforward and spectacular walk.
- Mam Tor — the “shivering mountain”, so called because it is slowly collapsing, taking the old main road with it. The abandoned buckled tarmac is worth seeing.
- The Pennine Way — Britain’s first long-distance path starts at Edale and goes 268 miles to the Scottish border.
- Chatsworth House — one of the great English country houses, with a Capability Brown park.
- Castleton — four show caves, including Blue John Cavern, source of the rare purple-blue mineral found nowhere else.
- Bakewell — and the Bakewell pudding, which locals will tell you firmly is not the same as a Bakewell tart.
Well dressing
The Peak District villages are the home of well dressing, the custom of decorating springs with elaborate pictures made from flower petals. Villages dress in rotation from May to September, and it is one of the more remarkable folk traditions surviving anywhere in England.
Practical notes
Excellent by public transport, unusually for a national park — trains from Manchester and Sheffield stop at Edale, Hope and Grindleford, and the Hope Valley line runs right through it. Weekends in summer are extremely busy at the honeypots; midweek and the western moors stay quiet.