Hope & Castleton | The UK is awesome mini-series 🏰

About the towns…

Hope is a cute little village in Derbyshire. It is very scenic & is situated where the Peakshole water & the River Noe meet. It is easily accessible by train & has rolling hills as far as the eye can see as well as ancient caves home to limestone, fossils & stalagmites.

Castleton is a short walk from Hope or you can drive / take the bus. This place is very special, it is like transporting back 40/50 years into the most beautiful quintessentially English villages. (Even as a Scottish person, I can still appreciate this 🤭)

The primary reason for my visit was to see Peveril Castle, which was one of William the Conqueror’s first stone built castles in England. However, I fell in love with the village, all of the old authentic locally run stores, the friendly people & the views of the Peak district are so picturesque, it’s difficult to articulate succinctly! From Castleton you can go into ancient caverns/caves, travel through Winnats Pass (I have videos on my Instagram post here!), do all manner of hiking, paragliding & see lots of cool wildlife.

Story time 🏔️

Generally speaking, I am fairly decent at walking, after all I have been doing it for 20 odd years (+/-50% on the years), however the climb to Peveril Castle almost killed me off, without any exaggeration. When I arrived at the base of Castle grounds, I set off with a febrile mindset, excited to get to the top, full of energy! However, it’s incredibly steep & the path up to the castle is a zig zag rather than straight line. There are benches to take a rest halfway, but I couldn’t even make it to the first bench. I had to take a lie down on the grass, after a couple of minutes I realised I was being eaten alive by ants & all sorts of other creepy crawlies. Not a fantastic start to the trip 😂

Winnats Pass was one of the most awesome places I have ever been in the UK. My photos below don’t do it any justice, but it’s clear to see why it is such a popular place to visit. You can walk or drive through the hill pass & limestone gorge, but dotted around the place there are signs for falling rocks. I was thinking to myself this nanny state stuff is getting out of hand, rocks don’t just fall from the sky. If any do, it is probably some yob throwing them (or ‘flinging bricks’ as we say in Scotland), it turns out I was wrong. Some small rocks do roll down the sides of the hills, one just about took me out of the game, so when passing through be careful & keep an eye out for falling rocks.

There is a cool independent craft alcohol shop in Peveril that I went into. I wanted to get some Blue John Gin for my mates birthday, it isn’t mass produced & you can only get it in a few places. This was at the end of my walk, I had racked up around 35k steps, so was a sweaty mess. This is the type of store where they really value customer service & want to talk to you about what you’re looking for etc. However, given that I was rather aesthetically unpleasing (well more so than usual), I just wanted to grab the gin & go, no chat, no thrills, bag up the gin, thank you good sir & I will be on my way. Regrettably, as I went to leave I then noticed the counter was full of all types of alcohol that had ‘Taster’ written on it. If I hadn’t been so anti social & set in my way, I could have treated myself to a few samples, which if you have read my blog before, you will know I am a sucker for! Moral of the story is, even if you are feeling antisocial, free booze might be on hand, so keep an open mind!

Some photos of the trip… 🤳🏼

Where to eat & drink? 🍻🍽️

At the risk of sounding unnecessarily melodramatic, you really cannot visit Castleton & not stop by Peveril stores & bakery. It is a winsome family run, long established place. Everything they sell is made in house with local ingredients, made by local people in the village. The food is to die for! They have everything from unique pies to pastries to succulent bread 😍. I wanted to get some photos inside or even try to do a video, but it was pretty busy & lots of children running around etc so I didn’t take any. When I was eating my pie outside on a ledge, a big seagull was eyeing me up, so I had to get it down the hatchet & not mess around with taking photos. There are also lots of countryside bars dotted around & small tap houses if you want to stop by for a beer!