Peak District Drive

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FROM GOANNA: Mark led us on a drive around the scenic Peak District, taking in beautiful forests, villages and views of the area. We made several stops, the first being Man Tor, a Roman hill fort. While the wooden fortress itself is long gone, the earthworks associated with the fort are still clearly visible in the hillside. On a fine day, the climb to the top would be well worth the view.

Our second stop was Peverill Castle, not far from Man Tor. The castle was built around 1060, with a later tower and castle walls remaining on the site as ruins. The climb up to the castle from the village of Castleton was steep, but once there, we had heaps of fun wandering around and pretending to be medieval knights, prisoners and damsels in distress.

Our next stop was a tiny church perched high above Hathersage village, where we went to visit Little John’s grave. The church was preparing for a wedding, with flowers around the beautiful stone door. Coming back down to Haverschott village proved to be fun on the steep single laneway, against all the wedding traffic trying to get up the hill!

Our last stop of the day was one for the young and young at heart - Abbeydale Model Engine Railway. Big and Little Cocky, Poppy, Mark and Alexander all enjoyed several rides each on all different model steam trains before it was time for the place to close and for us to make our way back to Sheffield for dinner.

For dinner, we all headed out to the local Chinese restaurant, along with Tracy’s brothers Little Mick and girlfriend Amy, and Matthew. We made quite a crowd, and enjoyed a huge banquet feast as well as quite a few laughs.

LITTLE COCKY’S COMMENTS: It was very hard to walk up to the castle. I pretended to be a knight looking out of the castle windows, it was great fun. Little John was a monk who was friends with Robin Hood. I went on 16 train rides!

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Photos

Peverill Castle
About to start the climb