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...

4¼miles (6.8km) of moderate walking on field paths and cart tracks; rocky in DeepdaleRECOMMENDED MAP: Ordnance Survey 1:25,000 scale Outdoor Leisure map Sheet 2; The White PeakBUS SERVICES: Transpeak TP service from Derby stops at the Monyash road-end. Hulleys 177 Bakewell to Buxton via Monyash service stops at Chelmorton Post Office. High Peak 193 Tideswell to Buxton service also stops at Chelmorton Post Office. For up to date bus times, check with Traveline on 0871 200 22 33.  Open daily 0700 – 2200REFRESHMENTS: Church Inn opposite the parish church at the top end of Chelmorton village.CAR PARKING: Roadside or at the pub but only if you intend visiting after the walk. People have been living around Deepdale for thousands of years. Their early burial mounds are on the surrounding heights and, nearby, is the mysterious stone tomb of Five Wells.  Badly damaged by Victorian archaeologists, there were once two chambers within this elongated limestone cairn containing pottery and flint tools. Chelmorton is a linear village with its houses filling the gaps between farms.  They all use water which flows from a well above the road end – it goes by the delightful name of Illy Willy Water.  The 700 year-old parish church is dedicated to St John the Baptist and the traditional locust weather vane commemorates the time he spent in the wilderness. The village sits at the lower half of a west-facing slope, covered by a unique pattern of narrow enclosed fields – the preserved relics of medieval husbandry.  Oxen were used to drag simple ploughs and these lumbering beasts were difficult to turn.  As a result, fields tended to be long and narrow, with each farmer working those around his farm and sharing common grazing on larger fields beyond the village. Deepdale to the north of Chelmorton is a...