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Palatial Lyme Hall, in central England's Peak District, gained fame as the home of the dashing Mr. Darcy in a television adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.
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Peak performance
Thanks to airline price wars, the English countryside is closer than you think
By
Andy Markowitz
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
(October 16, 2003)
Honestly, I don't usually slug whisky at noon.
But we had this bottle, and on a gloriously crisp fall day it seemed an appropriate way to christen our first hike through Peak District National Park. Especially when the bottle in question came dirt cheap and duty-free.
We'd picked it up the day before at Ruzyne Airport a few minutes before boarding our flight for a four-day jaunt through central England. And if that seems like a long way to go for a short break, you haven't been paying attention to the commercial aviation news -- or to the roving packs of Brits that descended on Prague all summer.
Discount airlines have been falling all over themselves to shuttle folks between the CR and the UK -- three new ones set up shop here just this year, challenging dinosaurs British Airways and Czech Airlines to cut prices in the bargain. These days, flying to the Isles is as fast, as easy and, with a little due diligence, not much more expensive than taking the train into surrounding Central Europe. The Peak District, 1,438 square kilometers (555 square miles) of mostly open countryside ringed by major cities and within easy distance of three airports, makes a perfect getaway target.
Happy wanderers
Fashioning an itinerary that involved two airlines, two airports and about $250 (6,750 Kc) round-trip for both of us, my wife and I ditched work in New Town midafternoon and, in the time it takes to ride the rails to Vienna, were sipping pints in a Derbyshire pub. The next morning we made for our main destination, the Edale Valley in the heart of the Peaks.
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Picnickers and rock climbers enjoy Froggatt Edge, above Derwent Valley.
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The grandiose name is a bit of a misnomer. The park's highest point, Kinder Scout, rises a mere 636 meters (2,067 feet). What the park offers is quintessentially gorgeous English walking country: glacier-carved hills, heather-covered moors, stark rocky outcrops ringing how-green-is-their-valleys.
Little wonder that this is where working-class ramblers made their stand 70 years ago against British laws that had transferred high, wild, formerly public land to the control of wealthy owners. The "mass trespass" of April 24, 1932, in which several hundred walkers illegally marched up Kinder Scout, sparked laws opening up the countryside and led to the creation of Britain's 11 national parks, of which the Peak District is the oldest (founded in 1951) and most popular (250,000 to 500,000 visitors a week).
Even in the off-season it gets pretty crowded on the most accessible trails, like the short, flat hike to cliff-top Froggatt Edge near the eastern border of the park. But we found splendid near-isolation tramping through pasture and dale up to Rushup Edge, a ridge path where we took in spectacular views of the Edale Valley while passing Bronze Age burial mounds and ring forts.
FIT OF PEAKS
Manchester, Leeds Bradford and East Midlands airports are all within 40 miles of Peak District National Park. Direct service to one or more is offered by EasyJet (www.easyjet.com), Jet2 (www.jet2.com), Bmibaby (www.bmibaby.com) and Czech Airlines (www.csa.cz).
• Frequent trains between Manchester and Sheffield stop at several stations within the park, including Edale. There is also regular bus service, but the schedule is curtailed on weekends. If you plan to stay in a more remote part of the park or visit a variety of sights, consider renting a car.
• The Peak District National Park Authority Web site (www.peakdistrict.org) and the privately run guide
www.peakdistrict- nationalpark.com are good sources of tourist information. Check www.walkingbritain.co.uk/ regions/ peak.shtml for a sneak peek at the best hikes.
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Save for one breath-sapping stretch along a crumbling, abandoned road up to the edge, this was a relatively low-key ramble. The biggest pitfall was treading through the calling cards left by the sheep and cows that graze ubiquitously on and around the trails. But don't be fooled by the low elevation -- not all walking here is a walk in the park. The weather is notoriously erratic, even in summer, and much of the terrain is a boggy slog or a rocky scramble.
Descending back into Grindsbrook Booth -- one of five "booths," or tiny hamlets, strung through the valley that make up Edale village -- we rewarded ourselves with ale, cider and a starchily filling pub meal at The Old Nag's Head, a self-proclaimed "hiker's bar." It marks the semiofficial start of the Pennine Way, a 250-mile (400-kilometer) trail up the spine of England to the Scottish border. (A pint at the Nag's Head is the traditional kickoff to a walk up the full way.)
Rock festival
The trek to the high moorlands of Kinder Plateau climaxes with a gorgeous but steep half-mile clamber up boulders alongside and across Grinds Brook stream, the final hundred or so yards hand-to-hand. (It's rated "moderate"; I'm not jock enough to hazard "strenuous.") From there the path hugs the ridge west to meet the Pennine Way, passing through perhaps the Peaks' most vivid sight, the Woolpacks, hundreds of rock formations carved by wind and erosion into surreal sculptures (they've been compared to the work of avant-gardist Henry Moore).
Between daytime tramps and nighttime meals at some of the area's numerous gastronomically adventurous pubs, we made a pilgrimage to palatial Lyme Hall, which stood in for the stately home of Mr. Darcy in the BBC television adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. The British National Trust, which owns the estate as well as much of the Peaks parkland, astutely exploits this connection. We skipped the house itself in favor of the woodsy, deer-studded grounds and gardens, sniffing out locations from the TV series, which we've watched more times than I care to admit.
Departing Derbyshire for our flight home a couple of days later, we were inclined to agree with the Austen character who extolled the area's mix of "wildness and artifice -- together in the one perfect county." Then again, we've always heard Wales is awfully nice, too, and one of those discounters just started flying from Prague to Cardiff. ...
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