Peak District, Derbyshire and Midlands

The Peak District National Park can easily be accessed from Manchester, Sheffield, Derby and Nottingham, and the region as a whole offers a fantastic range of walking, scrambling and cycling routes to suit most abilities. To the north, the Dark Peak is an area of upland and moorland providing exhilarating walking and there is a great selection of 40 walks in this guide, around Edale, Marsden, Fairholmes, Baslow and Castleton, including Kinder Scout and Mam Tor. The Pennine Way begins in the Dark Peak at Edale, before following 270km along the spine of the Pennines all the way to the Scottish borders at Kirk Yetholme.

The Dark Peak is also well known among climbers for scrambling on the ‘Edges’, and in this guide of 41 routes, including Kinder Scout, the Wilderness Gullies and Bleaklow, there are scrambling routes suitable for all the year round.

To the south lies the limestone of the eastern White Peak, covering Ashbourne, Eyam, Castleton, Matlock and Bakewell, crossed by both longer trails and popular shorter walks exploring pretty valleys and villages. This guidebook contains suggested routes for 42 full day and half-day walks.

If you are a cyclist there are great opportunities to explore the Peak District. Families can enjoy minor roads, towpaths and tracks, while the more experienced can take on the rougher tracks, or cycle the Tour of the Peak District – a multi day 250km cycle tour visiting the best of the Peak District. The routes in Cycling in the Peak District are ideal for gravel/adventure bikes (or hybrid/cross), though most can be easily adapted for road bikes.

This area of the website also covers guidebooks to, or easily accessible from the Midlands. Shropshire is the other obvious destination other than the Peak District for those living in Birmingham and the West Midlands. Cicerone have two guides – Hillwalking in Shropshire has 32 walks covering the Wrekin, Wenlock Edge, Long Mynd and Stipperstones, Castle Ring and Bury Ditches. For a great long distance hike of 290km (180 miles) the two loops comprising the Shropshire Way, centred on Shrewsbury, visit all the key landforms of this diverse and fascinating geological area on the Welsh borders.