We're just back from a weeks family holiday in the Peak District. Until 2019, this trip was an annual occurrence, but after changing venue to North Devon in 2019 due to lack of our preferred accommodation availability and then a break for Covid in 2020, it's taken us until now to get back to Derbyshire.
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| Winster Hall dining room on Halloween |
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| Our bedroom! (Very creaky floorboards!) |
Our base for the week was the impressively named Winster Hall, a three storey Grade II listed building dating back to the mid 1600's. Although it has clearly had work done (a nice kitchen and conservatory), it still retains much of it's old world charm and is an impressive building from the front. A large stone flagged, and dim dining room greets you as you enter through the solid wooden front door, draughty sash windows, creaky stairs and floorboards are par for the course. We even found some round pin electric sockets! It was however comfortable, well equipped and warm, and importantly able to accommodate up to 16 people (the most in our party at any one time was 15).
Situated between Matlock and Bakewell in the old lead mining town of Winster it was reasonably based for our break, although a little further south than we'd have liked, but not inconveniently so.
With a mix of ages from 6 to 73 and a range of mobility within the group, our activities necessary had to be adapted to suit. Days of 10 mile hikes across the peaks and valleys are probably behind (most of) us. A gentle amble at Carsington Water (although there wasn't actually much water in it!), and couple of miles along the Monsal Trail into Bakewell were comfortably flat, and punctuated as always by coffee stops.
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| Carsington Water reservoir - worryingly low on water |
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| Bakewell |
Later in the week, we were able to get into some more traditional walking as we completed circular trails around the Chatsworth Estate (plenty of deer to see), Birchen Edge and Stanton Moor, and although none were overly taxing or longer than about 4.5 miles, they definitely required walking boots, cake stops and raincoats.
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| Nelson's Monument on Birchen Edge |
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| The Three Ships near Nelson's Monument L-R: Victory, Defiance, Royal Soverin (sic) The names are carved into the rocks |
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| The Eagle Stone near Baslow Edge |
The weather wasn't great, but one cataclysmic downpour at Chatsworth apart that soaked us to the skin in about a minute flat, we managed to avoid the wet stuff, although the sun was in generally short supply until our last day. The temperatures held up nicely, with just a hint of frost on the last day.
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| Chatsworth House |
We enjoyed a couple of meals at the local inn, the friendly Miners Standard a short walk top the hill from Winster Hall, with what must have been a parliament of owls hooting madly in the dusk on our walk up. They'd probably do a better job than that other parliament....
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| The group by Wednesday |
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| The Cork Stone, Stanton Moor |
All in all, we had a hugely enjoyable week, and are already looking forward to returning to the Peak District next year.
There are more photos on my Flicr page in the Peak District 2022 Album.
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| Looking towards Matlock from Stanton Moor |
Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/people/simon_hiscocks/
Instagram: simon_hiscocks
