The Peak District is situated between Manchester and Sheffield. Three quarters of the world’s heather moorland is in the UK and a large proportion of it in the Peak District National Park. Jennifer and I visited it in August last year, when the heather was in full bloom. It is an area neither of us had ever visited before. We stayed at a small hotel in the middle of the national park and travelled to see some of the attractive spots.
The millstones are very typical of the Peak District. Corn mills are recorded in the Domesday Book of 1068 and quarrying for millstones is recorded to have taken place as early as the 12th C, but archeological evidence suggest that mill stone production began during the Roman period. We found them everywhere on our walks.
Jane Austen based her novel Pride and Prejudice in the Peak District and Chatsworth House (situated in the Peak District) was the inspiration for Mr Darcy’s Pemberley.
It isn’t called Peak District for its peaks. The highest point is only 636 metres high. The name is instead thought to derive from the Pecsaetan, an Anglo-Saxon tribe which settled in the area.
Jennifer and I jointed Robert Canis, who had been in the Peak District on many occasions to capture the heather, and I let our images speak for themselves. The first photos are from two viewpoints, Millstone Edge and Curbar Edge but also from Padley Gorge and the woodlands nearby.
