The Peak District - one of the best places in England to holiday (Peak District)

Member Name: CaptainD

Product:	Peak District
Date:	28/04/05 (1362 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Scenery, walks, Variety of attractions, people, Local specialities, reasonable prices in general

Disadvantages: Some of the atractions are rather pricey

Located in Derbyshire, The Peak District is one of the best places to go in England if you want to have a holiday in the countryside. In fact, if you want to consider that you have seen the best sights that England has to offer, visiting the Peak District is a requirement.

Perhaps the scenery lacks the grandeur of the Alpine region and the weather is less than perfect (understatement of the decade), but there’s so much to do and see in the Peak District, along with some wonderful walks, great scenery, and plentiful local services that it rates very highly indeed.

Accommodation

There is a wide range of accommodation based in and around the Peak District, from posh hotels to cottages you can rent for yourself. (This is what we did for our honeymoon and it felt much more special than going to a hotel.) If you want to be in the best place for all the sights and attractions, your best bet is to go to Matlock. This is likely to be busy most of the year though as for some reason it’s the bikers’ capital of England, and there is often some sort of motorbike rally going on there. If you do choose Matlock be sure to book up a long way in advance! Otherwise, it’s a case of seeing where you want to go / what you want to do and picking a location based on those factors.

Local Services

With a few decent-sized cities nearby in case you need them, the services you’ll use most often are the plentiful pubs, restaurants, and coffee shops scattered around. You’ll never have to go far before you find somewhere to stop and have a drink or a meal – well, unless you’re really doing some serious hiking! The prices are extremely reasonable, for the most part even at the big tourist centres and attractions. The range of foods etc available is pretty good and there are often local speciality dishes available, the only one that immediately comes to mind is Ale Pie but there are others. The local pubs and coffee shops (and we’re talking about little independent ones, often attached to a Post Office, not the soulless environs of Starbucks and the like) have a charm and quaintness about them that can only be achieved by places where you feel you’re walking back in time – it looks as though they’re practically unchanged over the decades. The friendliness of the locals certainly adds to the experience. (Despite the quaintness, however, you’ll very rarely find places that don’t accept credit cards!)

They also like their cheese Up North, and there are some seriously gut-expanding ranges for you to sample, both at the restaurants and the little local shops. The shops too have an air of antiquity hanging over them, and you can quite often get some pretty unusual items to take back as keepsakes, along with the normal touristy items, postcards, etc.

Walks

Most holiday cottages (and possibly hotel rooms but I can’t verify this) have at least one local guidebook with walks available to you. The walks vary quite considerably in length, difficulty, and estimated time to complete, so there’s something for everyone. As usual, if you live in a city you may find that you’re nowhere near as fit as you thought you were and a “gentle” 4-hour walk nearly kills you! On a sunny day these walks offer some glorious views, but obviously if it’s a dull, damp day you may need to be a dedicated hiker to still enjoy them.

Attractions

But if you don’t fancy walking among the hills and dales (and occasionally mountains) of the Peak District, there are plenty of other places to go. There’s a train line populated with working steam engines, if that’s your thing; there’s Chatsworth House, a renovated historical house and gardens (voted the best in England), which apparently would take you more than a day to see all of the house alone (a bit pricy though - £14 a couple of years ago, we decided that was a bit too much), and many other things. Buxton is well worth a visit, though we didn’t stay there very long so I can’t remember too much about it. (Hey, we were on our honeymoon at the time, you can’t seriously expect me to remember details?!?!?)

I’ll let you do your own research as to what else is there – I’m just going to give you some details about one of the attractions we visited on our second visit to the Peak District:

The Heights of Abraham

Or was that “Abraham’s Heights”? Hmm… Anyway, this is named after a place in Canada (of the same name… duh) which I think has something to do with a war, can’t remember and anyway it’s not really important. The site is basically a mountain with on of very few working cable cars in England, two lead mines, a visitor centre, and some other stuff stuck on top of the mountain for good measure. (Stop me if I’m getting too technical for you.)

The cable car is damn fast, it seemed much quicker than most of the ones I’ve been on in Austria. You get some breathtaking views as you go up, and in the visitor centre, the story of how they actually got the cable car pylons in place is pretty breathtaking in itself. The novelty value of actually going on a cable car in England was in itself enjoyable (though of course it wasn’t an English company that made and installed it – they were French).

Quite a bit of effort has gone into making the tourist centre, walks, games of kiddies, restaurant, shop, and other facilities go a long way with a little space. The highlight though has to be going down the first of the mines (the second, a little way down the mountainside, is much smaller). It’s not as cramped as many so tall people aren’t so likely to have a headache and backache by the end of the journey! There’s a brief video before you go in and then a guided tour. If you like historical titbits then you’re in for a real treat. Of course, if you couldn’t give a damn about history, then you probably wouldn’t go there in the first place…

The walk down to the second mine is very enjoyable (if you’re luck y enough to get a sunny day, anyway). The walk up is pretty painful though, so beware! (It would be a good idea to get some training in beforehand…)

The only downside to the attractions in the Peak District is that if you do a few of them, the cost adds up very quickly. I would advise planning before you get there what you want to do. There’s quite a bit of variety in what you can do and see, but it is a tad on the expensive side, so be warned. (In fact, this is my only real reservation about the destination as a whole.)

Overall

If you like the countryside, hiking, history… you’ll be in heaven here. Well, unless the weather’s really against you, and you could say that about anywhere. I’m not sure how much smaller children would enjoy it, but I loved going to Austria when I was much younger and it was much the same sort of destination in many ways. Perhaps best for couples… though I’ve only been there with my wife, so I can’t compare what it’s like to go there with a group of people.

Well, enough of my waffling. You should certainly know enough by now to decide whether The Peak District is somewhere you’d want to visit. If you do, I hope you get the chance someday – I promise you won’t be disappointed!


Thanks for reading.


CaptainD

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