Sometimes the best days out are the ones where you don’t really have a grand objective. You just spot an opportunity, head out and see where the day takes you.
This particular Sunday started with yoga and a cooked breakfast before we locked up the house and walked down to Chesterfield to catch the 9am Peak Sightseer bus. My son was busy volunteering at the Chatsworth Country Fair, mainly picking up and moving rubbish by the sound of it, while my daughter was spending the day at a friend’s birthday party. With both children occupied, it seemed far too good an opportunity to waste.
The Peak Sightseer has become something of a summer tradition for us. I think we normally manage two or three trips on it each season, so it probably wasn’t surprising that we immediately recognised the driver from previous journeys. The bus was almost empty as we left Chesterfield.
He warned us that the Chatsworth Country Fair was causing some delays and because the buses weren’t being allowed into Chatsworth itself, the interchange between the Red and Blue routes had been moved to the Baslow car park area. Fortunately, none of that really affected our plans.
After a brief wait at Baslow, we were soon heading towards our first destination, Ashford-in-the-Water.
Our first mission was to see whether the village well dressings were still there. They weren’t, but that wasn’t a great disappointment because we had plenty more planned. From Ashford we climbed Pennyunk Lane towards Monsal Head, before dropping down to Monsal Viaduct and walking through the old railway tunnel.
From there we followed the former Midland Railway line along the Monsal Trail towards Hassop Station.
This is one of my favourite walks in this part of the Peak District. It isn’t especially long or difficult, but it joins together some wonderful bits of landscape, and the old railway gives you a very different perspective on the limestone dales. It also demonstrates one of the things I particularly like about the Peak Sightseer. Because you don’t have to return to a parked car, you can construct these little linear journeys across the Peak rather than constantly having to walk in circles.
At Hassop Station Café we stopped for a jacket potato before wandering outside to catch the Red Route back towards Baslow. There we changed onto the Blue Route and headed north through the Peak towards Blue John Mine.
Getting off at the Blue John car park gave us the start of our second little journey of the day.
We immediately headed down the old road towards Castleton, the abandoned section of the A625 that has been slowly, although perhaps not that slowly, sliding down the hillside for decades. From there we picked up the path past Odin Mine and continued down towards Castleton.
Above us, the Great Ridge was as popular as ever.
With another couple of hours available I would have been very tempted to head up towards Mam Tor, follow the ridge across to Lose Hill, and then pick up the Sightseer again somewhere further down the Hope Valley. It is exactly the sort of journey the hop-on, hop-off buses make possible.
That would have to wait for another day.
Instead we settled for something considerably less strenuous: pasties and drinks from Peveril Stores and Bakery in Castleton.
And then there really wasn’t anything left to do except sit back on the Blue Route and enjoy the journey home.
The bus took us through some of my favourite Peak District countryside, along the Hope Valley, past Longshaw and around the edge of the Eastern Moors, before bringing us back to Baslow. One final interchange put us onto the Red Route heading back to Chesterfield.
Considering the forecast, we’d done rather well. There had been a mixture of weather through the day, but I’d never actually needed to put my waterproof on. We’d walked two completely different sections of the Peak District, travelled through a huge sweep of countryside and still arrived home in time for tea.
Or is that dinner?
Either way, it had been another excellent day out.
For anyone living vaguely within reach of the Peak Sightseer who hasn’t tried it, I’d thoroughly recommend giving it a go. The obvious attraction is being able to sit on the open-top bus and watch the Peak District go past, but I think its real strength is the freedom it gives you to create journeys like this one.
Walk from Ashford-in-the-Water to Hassop. Jump on a bus. Travel across the Peak. Get off at Blue John. Walk down into Castleton. Pick up another bus somewhere completely different.
No car to retrieve and no need to make every walk circular.
We were also pleased to hear that the Peak Sightseer is expected to return next year, with passenger numbers apparently around six per cent higher this season than last. Perhaps the only mystery is why it isn’t advertised more widely.
After all, being able to leave Chesterfield at nine in the morning, spend a day wandering through some of the best countryside in the Peak District and be dropped back at the station in time for tea seems like something worth telling people about.