If the Pennines which start at Edale and run all the way up the centre of Northern England to just above the Scottish border is the spine then the White Peak is England’s bony coccyx.
It consists of a blend of limestone dales, relatively flat agricultural plateaus, spectacular limestone columns and featues and large expanses of woodland. The region’s current basic landscape was formed in the ice age when glaciers carved their way through limestone formed over hundreds of millions of years from the remains of a pre-historic tropical sea.
The region has been rightly celebrated since at least the 18th Century and has sustained a mass tourist industry since the mid-Victorian era when railways crisscrossed the region. Becoming popular with walkers and other outdoor persuits enthusiasts from the industrial areas surrounding the Peak District in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.
These pressures, alongside the demands of limestone extraction, industry, and creeping urbanisation led to early demands for conservation. The National Trust bought large chunks of the White Peak, including the rightly famous Dove Dale, in the early 20th Century. In 1951 alongside the neighbouring Dark Peak the area became part of the Peak District National Park.
The Walk
In early September 2022 I set off on a self guided walk between Youth Hostels (which coincidentially fell during the first weekend of the YHA’s 2022 Festival of Walking) in the White Peak. In doing so I was aided by Ordnance Survey’s Explorer app and my forty eight litre Osprey Kestral backpack.
Situated in the region’s distinctive little villages the White Peak is one of the parts of the country where the YHA’s hostel network remains so dense that it is possible to easily walk between a string of them.
I chose a classic White Peak walk, head to Ashbourne then entering the National Park near Dove Dale and following the course of the River Dove all the way to Hartington. Then on the second day heading north and slightly to the east, via Monyash, Deep Dale, Monsal Dale, Monsal Viaduct and Monsal Head, up onto Longstone Moor and then down and across towards Eyam. The village of Eyam is a historic mining settlement, as well as being famous for being the location of the last outbreak of the Black Death in the British Isles, where the villagers heroically quarantined themselves. The final day was a shorter walk south towards Bakewell, from where I got a bus back to the railway station and home.