Distance: 3.1 miles

Difficulty of the terrain: medium

Get the route via: Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. file from Dropbox

Short walk in the Peak District from Hope Railway Station to the rightly popular central Peak District village of Castleton and onwards to the Hope Valley’s famous showcaves and Winnats Pass.

The Story

The Walk

Getting Back

Where the White Peak Meets the Dark

Due west of the famed Peak District village of Castleton stands Winnats Pass. Steep and winding, it is an impressively towering cleft in a limestone cliff. The name comes from an old north east Midlands dialect term referring to the sound of the wind whistling down the pass. It is almost right at the point where the southern Peak District’s white limestone gives way to far darker millstone grit.

Here, only a few miles south of the base of the Pennine Way in Edale, is very much the place where the English Midlands bleeds into the North.

The limestone that Winnats Pass cuts deep into was formed 340 million years ago. It is the remains of an ancient prehistoric ocean. Nowadays geologists reckon that Winnats Pass, like many of the southern Peak District’s limestone dales, was created during the ice ages. In the case of Winnats Pass it was gouged out of the rock by glacial melt.

These days the road, improbably, has become a fairly busy part of the Peak District’s road network, providing a link as it has for millenia between Castleton and Peak Forest. Though due to a 1 in 3.5 gradient and the pass’ inherent narrowness, it is closed to vehicles over 7.5 tonnes. Winnats Pass was bypassed by the A625, however, in 1979 the stretch running partway up Mam Tor collapsed during one of the celebrated hill’s famous landslips. This left Winnats Pass as the only road running due west out of the Hope Valley.

A number of limestone caverns, as well as Castleton’s famous Blue John mine, are clustered around Winnat Pass. This includes the famous showcaves at Speedwell Cavern and Peak Cavern. Indeed at one time geologists thought that Winnats Pass was a vast collapsed cavern, though today the origin story outlined above is considered more likely.

Winnats Pass has a close connection to the history of the right to roam movement and the Mass Trespass of nearby Kinder Scout. When the land access movement in the 1930s protested the harsh sentences meted out at Derby Assizes to six of the organisers of the 1932 Mass Trespass of Kinder Scout Winnats Pass became the site of a mass protest rally. Up to 10,000 walkers gathered annually at Winnats Pass to rally and campaign for improved public rights to access the land. Something which has been partially achieved in the decades since the Second World War, but given that only a tiny proportion of land in the UK, even in National Parks like the Peak District is completely open access, remains very much a live issue.

But unsurprisingly, Winnats Pass has a long history as a place of transit. Castleton, alongside other historic former Peak District lead mining towns like Eyam and Wirksworth was once the northern hub of the region’s prosperous metals and minerals mining industry. The Odin Mine situated virtually at the base of Winnats Pass towards Mam Tor is thought to be the oldest lead mine in Derbyshire, at least as old as the Roman occupation of Britain. This made Winnats Pass an important route from the Hope Valley out to the west into Staffordshire and Cheshire and beyond.

One deeply unfortunate pair of travellers who sought to scale the pass in the year 1758 were an eloping couple Alan and Clara who sought to head up Winnats Pass to the chapel at Peak Forest to get married. During the period Peak Forest was known as the “Gretna Green of England”. As they climbed Alan and Clara were set upon by a group of lead miners who robbed and murdered them. Their bodies were hidden in a cleft in the rock only known to the area’s miners. The corpses were uncovered a decade later exposing the crime which had been committed against the two lovers who had previously been considered to have fled to get married.

Nowadays there is a legend that the ethereal and in certain lights eerie Winnats Pass is haunted by the ghosts of the two lovers doomed to eternally stalk the limestone cleft by their violent end, screaming for each other. In reality it is probably just the wind after which the pass is named, though the couple’s graves can be seen in Castleton’s St. Edmund’s churchyard to this day. Reports of the case generally do not state whether or not anybody was brought to justice for the crime.

Castleton, given its ancient history and great historical importance as a centre of the Peak District mining industry, has numerous other historical tales attached to it. The village even gets a mention in The Devil is an Ass, a play by Ben Johnson, amongst the most urbane of the Jacobean playwrights. A testimony of sorts that like Wirksworth, Eyam and other historical Peak District mining towns its fame and importance during the Middle Ages and Early Modern period was widespread.

High above Castleton sits Peveril Castle, founded shortly after the Norman Conquest of England, and featured in the Doomsday Book. Peveril Castle came into royal possession after its lord William Peveril the Younger backed the losing side in the 12th Century civil war between Matilda and Stephen known as “The Anarchy”. The crown’s desire to seize it attests to the economic importance of Castleton.

By the 16th Century the castle was falling down. Walter Scott featured the ruin in his Peveril of the Peak set during the 17th Century around the time of Titus Oates’ fake Popish Plot. It was touched up in the 19th Century when Castleton and the surrounding area became a tourist destination, later being taken on by the Board of Works, and in time English Heritage who manage the ruin to this day.

Castleton village is a rightly celebrated part of the Peak District’s tourist trail. It is well served by buses from Sheffield, and attracts tourists from across the UK and beyond. In recent years the village has undergone a bit of a change. Various artisan shops, cafes and cool pubs and hotels have opened. A change from the old fashioned and traditional seeming tearooms, pubs and other businesses found elsewhere in the UK’s national parks. Many of these businesses have a spooky theme to them. Speaking to the current prominence of the spooky in popular culture and also attesting to the legends and myths, including those of poor Alan and Clara, which are found in rich seams around Castleton and this part of the Peak District.

The Walk

Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. file from Dropbox

I create the Walk Midlands routes via Ordnance Survey Maps Explorer enabling me to take them on my phone. Subscribe yourself via the banner above.

This walk from Hope to Castleton, and beyond to the showcaves and Winnats Pass, begins from Hope Railway Station on the Sheffield to Manchester railway line.

Exit the station via the side next to the car park where trains run west towards Manchester.

Once on the car park, walk straight ahead down the road leading away from the station car park.

Soon you reach the busy A6187. Here turn right and begin walking towards the village of Hope.

Keep walking until you reach the village of Hope.

Once inside the village’s bounds keep walking until you reach the wall of Hope parish church’s graveyard.

Here there is a narrow road running off to the left.

Walk straight down this road past the church down a steep hill.

Soon you reach the bottom of the hill and a junction with a wider road.

Upon reaching this junction turn left and cross a footbridge across the stream.

Beyond the footbridge keep walking uphill along the side of the road.

Presently on the left there is a footpath running off across a stile onto a path running along behind a fence around the edge of a field.

Keep on walking along behind this fence, next to Peakshole Water, for quite some distance passing through several footgates along the way.

You pass through a footgate onto a flight of steps down across a railway line. This serves the Hope Valley limestone quarries and cement works.

Having crossed the railway line climb the bank on the far side and head through a gate out on a path across a field.

Continue along the path on the far side.

Presently you reach a wide field with the Hope Valley Cement Works off to the left. Famously one of the dramatic modernist highlights of the rural Midlands. Keep walking across the field, heading along a track straight ahead to the right of a small clump of trees.

Approaching the far side of the field you reach a drystone wall which you cross via a stile.

Keep on walking through a series of pastures approaching the outskirts of Castleton.

Follow a path cut through the grass of a meadow with a fence off on the left.

Presently you reach a bend in the path where it curves off to the right past a cluster of trees next to Peakshole Water.

Follow the path as it runs beside the stream across a meadow.

At the far side of the meadow the path runs into woodland and undergrowth off to the left.

Continue along this path as it turns into a farm track running past a farmyard towards the houses on the edge of Castleton.

Soon the track comes out beside the main road through Castleton.

Turn left and follow the road as it runs into the heart of the village.

Soon you reach the wall of St. Edmund’s churchyard where the bodies of the unfortunate couple Alan and Clara are buried.

Upon reaching the churchyard follow the road as it turns left.

Soon you come to a junction, here continue walking straight ahead down a narrower road to reach the ruins of Peveril Castle. To reach the showcaves and Winnats Pass turn right and continue along Castleton high street.

Continue along the high street towards the edge of Castleton and the top of the Hope Valley.

Look out on your left for a sign affixed to the wall of a house advertising “The Outdoor Shop”. Here, turn left.

Then turn left again onto a footpath running beside Peakshole Water.

Soon you reach a residential road. Here, turn right and walk a short distance across a bridge.

Soon you reach a junction on the path. Straight ahead you reach the entrance to Peak Cavern.

Turn right to continue towards the edge of Castleton, Winnats Pass and the other showcaves.

Soon the path reaches a narrow road lined with houses.

Here turn left and follow the road a short distance uphill.

Soon it turns into a rocky footpath.

Then you pass through a cluster of trees and a gate out onto a track with leads around the bowl of the top of the Hope Valley towards Winnats Pass.

Continue along this track walking straight as it covers around towards Winnats Pass.

Soon you head down towards the side of the road which runs up through Winnats Pass.

Once beside the road turn left and walk up towards the base of the pass.

This is where the walk ends.

Getting Back

To get back by public transport return to the centre of Castleton where at the time of writing (in October 2023) the 271 and 272 buses ran frequently back towards Sheffield via the other villages in the Hope Valley. There were also six or so buses each day between Castleton and Bakewell and Castleton and Chesterfield. For trains return to Hope Valley Railway Station or if wanting a longer walk climb the Great Ridge and head to Edale where there are hourly trains throughout the day east to Sheffield and west towards Manchester.