THE PEOPLE’S PARK

To mark the 70th anniversary of the creation of the UK’s first national park, the Peak District, Helen Moat walks the boundary path and revels in its wild and beautiful landscapes.

What better way to celebrate the Peak District National Park’s 70th birthday this year than to walk its 190-mile-long boundary? The Peak District may not be Britain’s largest national park (it only ranks sixth) but it is its first, and within its 555 square miles there’s a thrillingly diverse landscape.

The Dark Peak is a brooding landscape of exposed moorland, rocky outcrops and dizzying escarpments. Its fringes are pooled by reservoirs and scattered with gritty mill settlements, rich in industrial heritage. The Dark Peak’s underlying gritstone stretches across the north of the park, with arms, east and west, cradling a gentler White Peak of meadow and dale.

The White Peak’s limestone soil nurtures an abundance of wildflowers and the insects and butterflies that feed off them. Tucked into the uplands and dales are historic stone-built settlements and fine country houses, all inviting exploration.

In spring, it is heavenly here – Dark Peak or White. The season begins with the first green shoots of snowdrop and wood anemone emerging from the frozen ground. As the weeks wear on, the earth softens. Primroses splash country lane verges; sweet-scented bluebells fill woodlands and early purple orchids fleck dale-side slopes. Week by week, the soundtrack of birdsong is ever-changing: the trill of wren, a burst of blackbird and the cascading notes of willow warbler.

April turns to May and the soporific call of the cuckoo drifts across country tracks. On the moors, the acrobatic song of the

skylark spills from the sky and the plaintive call of the curlew rises from cloughs. To begin with, the birdsong is tentative, a scattering of quiet solo notes, accumulating in voice and volume until it becomes a joyous orchestra. This is what it is to walk the Peak’s boundary in springtime. It feels like an awakening.

What a time to visit. And visit we do. This much-loved national park receives more than 13 million of us every year. Since Covid-19, these numbers have risen even more, the users of the Monsal Trail doubling. The lockdowns that we have lived through have left us yearning for fresh air and wide-open spaces and the chance to find solace in places of immense beauty. In walking the national park’s boundary, the long-distance rambler is able to experience the full diversity and enchantment of the Peak landscape on the quieter edges, away from the crowds.

Following on from the work of countryside enthusiast Ethel Haythornthwaite – the campaigner who drew up the boundary for the Peak District National Park – Friends of the Peak District has created a longdistance walk using existing public footpaths, trails and lanes, tried and tested by an army of volunteers. It wriggles in and out of the Peak District’s boundary and across the counties of Derbyshire, Cheshire, Staffordshire and Yorkshire.

From the intimate wooded dales between Buxton and Peak Forest, the boundary walker climbs on to open moorland, navigating stony Pennine tracks through bleak and misty landscapes. Skirting Dove Stone Reservoir, the forbidding rockfaces overhead convey all the dark atmosphere of a Highland glen. From High and Low Bradfield, the walker crosses a more varied landscape of moorland, escarpment and wooded valley.

“THIS IS WHAT IT IS TO WALK THE PEAK’S BOUNDARY IN SPRINGTIME. IT FEELS LIKE AN AWAKENING”

After Winster, paths undulate through rolling meadows of drystone walls and field barns. Among the hills and holes of the mining spoils above Bonsall, orchids, wild pansies and violets thrive in the limestone soils. Further on, along the park’s southwestern fringes, paths lead through the leafy parklands of Ilam and Lyme halls. Between Bollington and Whaley Bridge, the rambler will find an extraordinary legacy left by the Industrial Revolution: mills, canal and railway systems, viaducts and bridges. The grand finale skirts the rhododendron-fringed Fernilee and Errwood reservoirs before dropping through moorland into Buxton and the end of a heart-lifting long-distance walk.

You can set aside a two- to three-week block to tackle the Peak District Boundary Walk in one go, or slowly savour the 20 stages – each averaging 10 miles – one glorious stretch at a time. Here are three stages that, to me, best sum up the pleasures of an unforgettable walking route.

BUXTON TO PEAK FOREST

Buxton, the Bath of the north, makes a fine starting and finishing point for a long-distance walk. Before stepping out, it’s worth making time to explore the Georgian spa town. Here the Romans discovered the health-giving properties of its natural mineral water. Fill up your bottle at St Ann’s Well opposite the newly restored Crescent, commissioned by the 5th Duke of Devonshire in an attempt to outshine Bath’s Royal Circus. Next to the well, the Pump House is home to an exquisite information centre of painted

ceilings and marbled arches. Wander through Cavendish Arcade, with its barrelshaped stained-glass ceiling, and the opulent Buxton Opera House. Stroll through the Winter Garden, Octagonal Hall and Garden Pavilions, then climb the hill to the monumental Derbyshire Dome.

The first tentative steps of a long-distance walk are always thrilling. Soon the handsome Georgian and Victorian villas give way to open countryside. The boundary walker is plunged into Deep Dale, bright with the blossom of hazel in spring. At Blackwell Mill on the River Wye, take the alternative route through Chee Dale, weather permitting. This is a sublime river route along the base of a narrow limestone gorge; the rambler is forced ‘to walk on water’ along a series of stepping stones.

The dale opens out to marshy islands and languid pools. Dippers bob on the water here, the surrounding slopes covered in cowslips and early purple orchids. Wormhill is a good place to rest and admire the memorial to James Brindley, inventor of the modern canal system. From here the way rises and falls through upland meadows before dropping to Peak Forest. The first stage is complete.

MILLTHORPE TO BEELEY

Stage 11 offers up a Peak District in miniature: wooded dale, moorland, edge and ancient monuments. From Millthorpe, brookside pathways climb through Bank and Smeekley woods, fresh beech leaves luminous in the spring sunlight; the song of the brook and a meadow pipit cascading through the valley. The path rises steadily through Hewetts Bank and Ramsley Moor comes into view. At Fox Lane, detour to

Shillito Woods and its ancient stone cross, erected by monks in the 13th century.

Climbing on to Birchen Edge, the world and heart expand. In land-locked Derbyshire, the escarpment is, surreally, a place of watery themes. Carved into three side-by-side gritstone rocks – shaped like the prows of ships – are the words Victory, Defiance and Royal ‘Soverin’. Nearby, the slender Nelson’s Monument, balancing a stone ball on its tip, punctuates Birchen Edge like an upsidedown exclamation mark and all becomes clear: the rock etchings refer to Lord Nelson’s warships.

On Gibbet Moor, arrow-straight Emperor Stream drops down to feed Emperor Lake, the Cascades and Emperor Fountain at Chatsworth House. As I walk the track, stonechats rise out of the moor and a gang of stoats run hell-for-leather towards me. They brake to a comic cartoon halt before scarpering into heather. Further on, I watch a buzzard catch a thermal draft above Hob Hurst’s House, a Bronze-Age burial mound.

The last stretch in Beeley Plantation drops through an ethereal world of forest and waterfall. Sunlight streams through larch and Scots pines. The forest is a ruckus of birdsong. On Moorend lane, a family sits outside a wooden hut next to a covered stone oven, enjoying the gentle warmth of a stillyoung year. It could be an Eastern European smallholding, but they are on the edge of a quintessential English estate village: Beeley.

THORPE TO WATERFALL

Stepping out, Thorpe is sugared in soft spring mist, smoke curling from chimney stacks. Lane turns to country track,

careering down to Coldwall Bridge. The long, arched crossing carried humans and animals over the River Dove along the old turnpike route to Cheadle and the Potteries in times of yore. Here, the path heads north to follow the left bank of the River Dove, then the Manifold.

Where the path emerges at Ilam-Moor Lane bridge, the gothic splendour of Ilam Cross – with its cheeky imp among the angels – takes centre stage in a triangle of road. Behind, the olde English cottages of steeply pitched roofs, decorative bargeboards and shingle-fronts have a fairy-tale quality – the work of architect George Gilbert Scott. Pass the lodge house and walk through parkland to the Church of the Holy Cross, with its stumpy steeple and crown-shaped annex. The route crosses the Ilam estate. Views extend over the Italian Garden to the sheer slopes of Bunster Hill and Thorpe Cloud – the remnants of ancient coral reefs.

Paradise Walk follows the River Manifold through the estate, the sharp scent of wild garlic filling the air. A stiff climb takes the boundary walker up to the roof of the Manifold Valley. I watch a hare scurry along a drystone wall of moss and lichen before disappearing from sight. From here the upland meadows drop down again to the hamlet of Calton and a third waterway, the River Hamps. From here Waterhouses and Waterfall beckon, and the end of stage 15.

FULL CIRCLE

Walking into Buxton, spring is sliding into summer. The seasons continue to turn. Birdsong has quietened. Nests have been built and abandoned. Fledglings have taken flight. Like our ancient ancestors who celebrated the circular nature of life with their stone monuments – as with the Nine Ladies high on Stanton Moor – there is something deeply satisfying about the circular nature of the boundary walk.

There is, of course, sadness to have finished such a thrilling walk but there is also pleasure in knowing that within the perimeter of the national park, there are countless smaller circular walks showcasing the beauty and diversity of the Peak District, all waiting to be explored.

From Monsal Head in the Peak District National Park, watch the sun set over the spectacular limestone landscape of Monsal Dale and up the Wye Valley. The Victorian stone viaduct, which once carried a railway line over its five arches, is now a cycleway and footpath

TOP Early purple orchids and buttercups bloom near Peter’s Stone, a limestone knoll resembling St Peter’s Basilica in Rome, in Cressbrook Dale in the White Peak. The outcrop is also known as Gibbet Rock due to its gruesome history as a hanging spot

ABOVE Bluebells spring to life in the Upper Goyt Valley’s woodlands

TOP The large, wide Hope Valley runs east to west along the boundary between the gritstone moors and edges of the Dark Peak and the limestone outcrops and deep dales of the White Peak ABOVE Look and listen for recently arrived willow warblers heralding the dawn of a new season

TOP The lumpen millstone grit escarpment of Curbar Edge overlooking Curbar village in the Peak District’s Dark Peak ABOVE The Georgian spa town of Buxton is dominated by its grand Crescent. Designed by John Carr of York and built between 1780 and 1789, it faces the site of St Ann’s Well, a natural spring

ABOVE, MAIN The River Wye winds its way through the striking limestone gorge of Chee Dale and around the towering cliff of Chee Tor in the Derbyshire Peak District ABOVE, INSET At Chee Dale, ‘walk on water’ by crossing the Wye on stepping stones

TOP Known as the Three Ships, the jutting gritstone rocks on Birchen Edge are inscribed with the names of Nelson’s warships ABOVE Chatsworth House’s 90m-tall Emperor Fountain and 3.2-hectare Emperor Lake were built in 1843 in anticipation of a visit from Tsar Nicholas I of Russia, who never arrived

TOP The Church of the Holy Cross sits inside the grounds of the grand 19th-century Ilam Hall and gardens, Staffordshire ABOVE Modelled after a medieval Eleanor Cross, the intricately carved Ilam Cross was commissioned by landowner Jesse Watts-Russell as a memorial to his wife Mary, who died in 1840

Helen Moat is an author and travel and nature writer who was born in Northern Ireland and now lives in the Peak District. Helen is the author of A Time of Birds: Reflections on Cycling across Europe (Saraband).