Harlaxton Semester - weekend travel to the Peaks District

One of my goals for this semester is to  see more of the UK and revisit old favorites. One of England’s national parks is not too far to the northwest (a relatively simple bus-train-train-walk trip of about three hours), and it is one that I had never visited. The Peaks District sounds like it should be very mountainous, but in reality, it is made up of moderate limestone ridges, caves, a few old landslides and very, very old villages. To get a sense of scale of the ridges, (think Buffalo Mountain size but without the trees, for you Johnson City folks).

View from halfway up Mam Tor ("Mother Hill") towards Black Tor. Castleton, Peaks District.

I traveled with another faculty member, Dr. Julie Hensley, a poet who explores nature and people in her writings, She knew all sorts of geomorphology terms like karst topography and cut bank – we were friends immediately!! We stayed in the village of Castleton, home of Peveril Castle which was built by William, William the Conqueror’s son, “shortly after the normal conquest of 1066”. Yikes! It is now in ruins, and unfortunately we did not get to visit the castle as it was closed due to high winds (more on that later…). We didn’t see the castle, but we DID stay in the oldest building in Castleton, the Causeway House, which was built in the 17th century upon a 15th century medieval cottage.

Hiking up Cove Path, looking back at Peveril Castle with the village of Castleton in the distance hidden by the ridge.

In case you are paying attention to dates, the castle predates the town by about 100 years, as it was originally constructed as a hunting lodge associated with the Royal Forest of the Peak, with resources that included timber, lead, and silver mines. Only the king and his associates were permitted to hunt in the Royal Forest. This may remind you of the Robin Hood stories (associated with Nottingham, not too far to the south). The town was planned later because the mill, livestock grazing, etc. provided an excellent income to the lord of the castle.

On Friday we traveled by train from Grantham to Sheffield, then transferred to a train to Hope. We walked along a public footpath about a mile or so to Castleton, checked in and started walking. The limestone ridges are riddled with caves, and there’s a local fluorite-based gemstone called Blue John Stone. The caves were mined for veins containing banded yellow and blue fluorite that was fashioned into bowls, goblets, and jewelry. Thanks to Peaks District Online for the photo here.

Today, the caves are commercialized, so we did not pay for the tour and instead opted for a hike up the base of Mam Tor towards the ridge. Continuing along the ridge we hiked several miles and then took a footpath through farmers’ fields back to Castleton. We had had a LOT of rain and so the paths, especially around the gates and stiles were very muddy.  One has to take great care to close the gates behind you so that the sheep don’t escape.

The Limestone Way along the ridge.

On Saturday we woke up to rain and wind, and proceeded up the Cove Path (see the Peveril Castle picture above). This path took us up to higher ground where the wind was fierce – the path became a wind tunnel and we had to fight hard to make forward progress. We had plans to summit Mam Tor on Saturday, but were thinking better of it based on winds in the Cove Path. Still, we persevered as we decided that if the wind blew us down we weren’t going to fall far. Yes, it was THAT BAD. Julie had hiking sticks and I had to borrow one to brace myself as we eventually made it Mam Tor’s summit. We were sideways to the wind, in an almost Spiderman pose, trying not to be blown over. Exhilarating though!!

At the summit of Mam Tor. We estimated winds were  in excess of 50mph, based on our inability to stand up (you won't see that we are bracing against a stone monument. I felt a bit like Jim Cantore up there.