Peak District National Park

The Peak District became England's first National Park in 1951, covering 1,440 square kilometres straddling Derbyshire, South Yorkshire, Cheshire, and Staffordshire. The park divides into two distinct landscapes: the Dark Peak in the north and east, characterised by gritstone moorland, blanket bog, and dramatic escarpments of millstone grit; and the White Peak in the south and centre, a limestone plateau cut by narrow river dales with dry stone walls, flower meadows, and stone-built market towns. Kinder Scout at 636 metres is the park's highest point and was the site of the 1932 Mass Trespass, when around 400 ramblers defied gamekeepers to claim the right to roam — a pivotal moment in the history of open access legislation in England. Chatsworth House, ancestral home of the Dukes of Devonshire, stands in magnificent parkland in the Derwent Valley near Bakewell and is the showpiece country house of central England. Castleton, in the Hope Valley, sits beneath the Iron Age hillfort of Mam Tor and is surrounded by a remarkable cluster of show caverns — Blue John Cavern, Speedwell Cavern, Peak Cavern, and Treak Cliff Cavern — each displaying stalactites, stalagmites, and the unique semi-precious mineral Blue John fluorspar. Bakewell, the park's principal market town, is famous for the Bakewell pudding (a pastry shell filled with egg and almond paste, distinct from the commercial Bakewell tart), available from original bakeries on the market square. The Monsal Trail, an 8.5-mile walking and cycling route along a disused Victorian railway viaduct line through the White Peak dales, is one of England's finest traffic-free cycling routes.