This will be a short post, to atone for some of those longer ones.  The Peak District National Park is UK’s first national park, so we were kinda expecting it to have some of England’s more spectacular scenery.  Mountains always cause my blood to quicken, so I’m looking forward to seeing this area.

As it turns out, we end up traveling through the northern part of the Peak District National Park multiple times, taking highways going to other places.  Each time we expect to get a glimpse of the park, whetting our appetite for more.   Wishful thinking!  This is England in winter.  The views on our previous trips through this northern region?  A typical example is shown here.  Every time.  Nada.  There may be peaks out there, but they’re shy.

OK, this time we’re going to the Peak District from the south, starting from Sheffield, home of the famous stainless steel.  Some of Sheffield’s impressive buildings are shown

above.  Our first stop is Castleton, which is near the center of the Peak District.  There’s been a village here since 1086 when the Normans built Peveril Castle, shown to the left.  One can still see parts of the town ditch that surrounded the medieval village.  In the 1700’s lead mining was the main industry; impressive caverns related to the mining are nearby, and several miner’s cottages can still be found in the village.  A glimpse of the town is shown below, but we’re off to see better things, the scenery of the Peak District.

As you can see above and below, conditions are not exactly optimal …gee, it’s raining!  How novel!  Some views nonetheless.

Sigh.  We’ll try again another day.

This is another day, and although it is not exactly clear and sunny, it isn’t raining.  The left picture below is looking at the same area as the last picture above – a clear improvement!

Like the pictures above, the two below constitute a panorama.  It is rural splendor, isn’t it?

Below are more pictures from the Peak District.

The Peak District National Park is pretty, in a green and pastoral way, but at least from what we visited, in no way does it compare with the more mountainous Lake District (post England’s Lake District) – and it’s a far cry from something like our Rocky Mountain National Park.  In fact, the highest peak in this park is just 2,000 ft tall.  To be fair, this national park is called “Peak District”, not “Mountain District”, so some of my unmet lofty expectations are due to semantics.  I would suggest a better name is “Big Rounded Hills National Park”, but maybe that would be disrespectful to this glacier-scoured country.  I don’t think they know better.  For movie buffs, I’m reminded of Crocodile Dundee’s “That’s not a knife”.

Next post – one of our favorite cities (our most favorite city?) – Barcelona, Spain.