Distance: 6.6 miles

Difficulty of the terrain: hard

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

Walk across the northernmost part of the Peak District’s limestone country to Castleton home of the imposingly sited Peveril Castle which looks out into Derbyshire’s northern gritstone highlands.

The Story

Route Notes

Getting Back

Peveril of the Peak

For most people Peveril of the Peak is a pub in central Manchester, or a novel by Sir Walter Scott, who while famed for his Scottish historical tales, actually wrote a remarkably large amount about the English Midlands. The original Peveril however, is the imposingly situated castle from which Castleton gets its name.

Established shortly after the Norman conquest in the late 11th Century (it appears in 1086’s Domesday Book) Peveril Castle sits to this day on the craggy limestone hillside above Castleton at the western end of Derbyshire’s Hope Valley. This is amongst the northernmost extent inside the Peak District National Park of the band of limestone that runs from the Weaver Hills in the south up to the beginnings of the gritstone Dark Peak and the high moors around Mam Tor and the Great Ridge north of the Hope Valley.

It is little surprise that Peveril Castle was constructed by the Peverel family. In the early centuries after the Norman Conquest of England they were the lords of an area extending across northern and central Derbyshire into western Nottinghamshire, including the city of Nottingham itself, called the Honour of Peverel of the Feudal Barony of the Peak. It is thought that perhaps thanks to the prevalence of easily accessible quantities of the material nearby that Peveril Castle was one of the first stone, as opposed to earth and wood, castles constructed in England.

It was the Peverel’s who received the charter to establish a market at Castleton in the 12th Century spurring its growth as a town. During the middle ages and into the modern period the Peak District, while isolated and tricky to traverse, made its feudal masters wealthy due to its rich mineral and metal deposits, especially lead. Castleton became the centre of the Peak District’s northern lead mining industry home to one of the Barmote Courts that regulated and adjudicated on the extraction of the metal in the region. A Barmote Court survives to this day and continues to meet annually, even very occasionally hearing a case, at Wirksworth in the south of the region.

Peveril Castle remained an important seat of power throughout the middle ages. It is sometimes associated with the Coterel Gang, a group of gangsters, kidnappers and extortionists, active in the Peak District and elsewhere in northern Derbyshire, during the early 1330s. It is thought that the Coterel’s activities including their robbery and abduction of clerics and royal officials inspired the legends of Robin Hood which begin being told in the north east Midlands and south east Yorkshire during the 15th Century.

By the reign of Elizabeth I Peveril Castle’s significance had declined and it was in a perilous condition with only the keep remaining usable. Some consideration was given to pulling it down entirely, but eventually it was decided just to leave it to slowly crumble on top of the hillside where it sits.

The fortress was left to crumble in this situation until the 1820s when the publication of Walter Scott’s Peveril of the Peak in 1823 led to a revival of interest in the structure. In the novel Scott transposes what is known about the Peverel family of the high middle ages onto the 17th Century. 

During the 19th Century, Castleton’s importance as a lead mining centre and staging point for horse based travel across the Peak District declined, so its significance as a tourism destination grew. Something which took on its modern form at the end of the Victorian era and during the first half of the 20th Century as walking and cycling became mass hobbies. 

It was in this climate that the castle passed into the care of the state in 1932, becoming part of English Heritage who maintain it to this day in 1984. These days there is a constant stream of people up from Castleton to visit the ruins, though arguably the castle is best glimpsed with the high lands of the Dark Peak behind it looking down craggy Cave Dale on the approach to Castleton from the south.

Route Notes

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.

Upon alighting the bus in the centre for Tideswell, turn and head to the north towards the village’s large imposing church, known as “the cathedral of the Peak”.

On reaching a junction next to a cafe and a bookshop, beside the village’s cashpoint, turn left and follow a road heading out of the village.

Carry on heading to the left across a small square.

Now approaching the edge of Tideswell head uphill following a road signposted for Wheston to the edge of the village.

Here to cut a corner on the road you head straight ahead along a footpath past Tideswell’s community orchard and through a small copse to rejoin the road.

Walk straight ahead along a road running atop the limestone plateau past a farm to reach Wheston.

Upon reaching the small village of Wheston walk straight along the main road through the village.

Here you pick up the Pennine Bidleway, turning right to follow the road away from Wheston towards Peak Forest and the A623 road.

Continue until you reach the A623.

Here turn left and walk a short distance downhill towards Peak Forest before, taking care, crossing over the road and heading along a bridleway through a copse beside a farm. This forms part of the Limestone Way which runs up the southern Peak District from Rocester to Castleton.

Carry along the bridleway heading towards a tall ridge in the distance.

You emerge beside a bungalow and head up a driveway towards an old farmhouse converted into a large house.

Past the big house you emerge onto the hillside and follow a bridleway uphill.

On cresting the hill the gritstone dark peak, Derbyshire’s high moors, including Mam Tor, adjacent to Castleton at the top of the Hope Valley comes into view in the middle distance.

Follow the path downhill across pasture land.

Then follow it straight across flatter ground, heading through a series of gates approaching the top of Cave Dale.

Upon reaching the top of Cave Dale head to the right and follow the cleft downhill.

Cave Dale becomes trickier to descend as you progress down it. This is due to the volume of scree, and slippy smoothed limestone churned up the large number of walkers who navigate the valley.

Soon partway downhill you see Peveril Castle high on its limestone crag in front of you.

Nearing the top of Castleton traversing Cave Dale becomes a bit easier.

Then you emerge from the cleft in the rocks into Castleton village.

Upon reaching the road you turn left, soon reaching a small green, and then head down towards the main road through the centre of the village.

This is where the walk ends.

Getting Back

Castleton village bus station is served by buses to destinations across the Peak District and Sheffield throughout the day. Sheffield bound buses call at Hope Railway Station, the nearest station which has hourly trains to Sheffield and Manchester, the Manchester trains call at Edale. Rail services to the rest of the country can be caught from Manchester and Sheffield. Hope Station is easily walkable in no more than half an hour from Castleton.