DISTANCE: 5 miles (8km) of field and river path walking linked by a mile of walled farm track.  Reasonably dry underfoot except during lengthy wet spells. RECOMMENDED MAP: Ordnance Survey1:25,000 scale Outdoor Leisure Series Sheet 24, White Peak area. PUBLIC TRANSPORT:  TM Travel service 65 between Sheffield, Miller’s Dale and Buxton, hourly service, Monday to Sunday.  G&J Holmes/Hulley’s Buxton/ Miller’s Dale service 66.  Monday to Sunday. CAR PARKING: Station yard – pay and display.  Toilets on station platform. REFRESHMENTS: Station waiting room on platform.  This walk starts and finishes at the Monsal Trail car park on the site of the old Miller’s Dale Station.  Considering the fact that it appears at first glance to be only serving a scattered rural community, what was the need for such a large station?  The answer lies in the fact that it served two railways, the mainline from London St Pancras to Manchester and the Buxton branch line.  Both lines were closed in 1968 following Doctor Beeching’s notorious report.  Realising that the mainline passed through some of the finest dale-scenery in Derbyshire, Peak District National Park acquired the section of track between Bakewell and Wyedale, creating the popular Monsal Trail, an all weathers trail for walkers, cyclists and horse riders.  A café was opened in what was once the station waiting room, which together with the adjacent car park, made it an ideal starting point for walks along the trail and on the network of surrounding footpaths. I must have inadvertently travelled on one of the last trains to call at Miller’s Dale Station in 1968.  I had an appointment in Leicester on what turned out to be a densely foggy day, so as I lived at the time, conveniently near the Buxton/Manchester line, I decided to travel by train.  Returning later in the...

DISTANCE: 3½ miles (5.6km) of moderate forest track, open moorland, surfaced road, waymarked field path and rough access drive.  525 foot (160m) climb. RECOMMENDED MAP: Ordnance Survey Outdoor Leisure Sheet 1, Dark Peak. 1:25,000 scale. PUBLIC TRANSPORT: Hourly TP service buses to Buxton, then bus or train to Disley where a short walk along a back road leads to the driveway beyond North Lodge. CAR PARKING: Official car park below Lyme Hall.   Pay and display on entering the park via North Lodge on the A6.  Access to Lyme is free for National Trust members. REFRESHMENT: Old Workshop near pond beyond the car park. I thought I had finished my walks from and around the grand houses up and down the Peak District, but recently it was brought to my attention that there is at least one other I have overlooked.  This is Lyme Park, the grand Palladian mansion set in the heart of 1,400 acres of woodland and high moors on the north western boundary of the Peak District National Park.  A mere ten miles or so from the southern boundary of Greater Manchester, it acts as a popular breathing space for the citizens of towns surrounding what was once called Cottonopolis. Having said that, access is easy for anyone living more to the south; the A6 passes the northern entrance to the park, and regular trains and buses from Buxton stop at nearby Disley. Now jointly owned by Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council and the National Trust, Lyme was the ancestral home of the Legh family for over five and a half centuries.  Originally created by King Richard II who in 1398 granted land in the Royal Forest of Macclesfield to Piers Legh and his wife Margaret D’anyers.  Over the centuries what was once a hunting lodge became the magnificent...

Lathkill Dale is one of my favourite walking areas of the Peak. I don’t know how many times I have walked beside what Izaac Walton called ‘the purest of streams’. I have walked there and enjoyed it in all weathers and in every season of the year. There are almost unlimited variations of footpath routes on either side of the dale, north, south, east and west.  This walk was taken in early autumn when the leaves were just beginning to turn and the damp air had just a little hint of the winter still to come. The dale’s steep sides are now densely crowded with all manner of trees and shrubs, a haven for wildlife and the area below farmland on either side of the dale is classed as a National Nature Reserve. It is hard to realise that the trees are a comparatively modern addition to Lathkil Dale. Not so very long ago, a mere century past, this was an industrial zone with lead mines and a  flour mill; and even a short-lived gold rush that cost its investors a fortune, but all that is long gone.  Nothing remains but the ruins of Mandale Mine, one of the largest lead mines in the Peak, together with the pathetic attempts to dig into the hillside for what turned out to be fool’s gold.  Probably the only place where a small but steady profit was made for its owners was the flour mill at the end of the forested section of the dale, but even that is dead and gone. Nowadays the only income from Lathkil Dale is the result of fees paid by anglers and shooting parties who come in search of trout, or to catch the raucous pheasants heard calling amongst the shrubbery.  The walk begins and ends in...