Britain's first national park stretches across Derbyshire, Staffordshire, and parts of Cheshire, its millstone grit edges and limestone dales carved by centuries of weather and sheep farming. The southern White Peak offers gentler terrain — rolling pastures, drystone walls threading between villages like Bakewell, Ashford-in-the-Water, and Tissington. North lies the Dark Peak, wilder and more exposed, where Kinder Scout rises to 636 metres and the Pennine Way begins its long march toward Scotland.
Accommodation here follows the landscape's character. Former coaching inns anchor market towns, their stone facades unchanged since the turnpike era. Country house hotels occupy Georgian and Victorian estates, many with kitchen gardens now supplying their restaurants. The dining scene leans toward seasonal British cooking — Derbyshire lamb, locally shot game, cheeses from Hartington — served in candlelit rooms where log fires counter the moorland chill. Chatsworth's shadow looms large, drawing visitors who then discover the quieter pleasures of Lathkill Dale or the plague village of Eyam.
