travel dates: June 13-16, 2019
At some point or another in the planning stage of our England trip, we considered just about everywhere in the country as a potential third stop after London and Bath. We eventually landed on Bakewell in the Peak District through some combination of intention, luck, and randomness. We wanted something more rural after London and Bath, with some scenic beauty thrown in there. We wanted something that would position us well for getting over to Ireland next. Any number of places would have fit the bill and likely been fabulous, but the Peak District seemed a little less overdone and less likely to be crowded than some places, and we found an inexpensive AirBnb in Bakewell that would fit us all, and we were sold.
When we told people we were going to the Peak District, they tended not to have heard of it. “What do they have there?” people asked. “Umm….peaks?” I answered, not really being an expert on English geography myself.
Peaks!
And then this leg of our trip turned out to be much more Bakewell-centric and less driving around the Peak District than we had planned, thanks to Dave’s lost license. After Bath, I was ready to park the car and not move it until it was time to return it before we left for Ireland (where Dave’s license was set to arrive via overnight mail before we had to drive again!)
Fortunately, there’s plenty to do in and around Bakewell (and if you’re going to be somewhere in the Peak District without a car, there are relatively good public transportation options in Bakewell, too….a bit more on that later).
So the Peak District, it turns out, is indeed a place with a lot of peaks. It’s also the home of Peak District National Park, headquartered in the little village of Bakewell, a little over an hour southeast of Manchester. English National Parks, from what we saw, are not like American National Parks, with elaborate visitors centers and ranger programs and such. Peak District National Park seemed to be more of a protected natural area; the “visitor centre” in Bakewell was mostly a gift shop, where the cashier doubled as a someone who could provide tourism information about the area.
We had two full days here, and we stayed right in the heart of town, within walking distance of everything. One thing to note about Bakewell is that parking can be very tricky. Our Airbnb included a parking spot, but we didn’t feel comfortable trying to wedge our giant van into it, so we ended up parking along a rural road a good ways out of town. There are a few large pay lots right on the edge of town, but overnight parking isn’t allowed in them. If you’re in town for a day, and it’s during the week, you likely won’t have trouble finding parking in one of those lots.
Our big old van, on a nice, wide English country road (yes, I am being ironic):
On our first day, we stayed in town and explored. First we checked out the Old House Museum, which is set up to tell about life in Bakewell during various eras from the time the house was built during the reign of Henry VIII. They have a cute scavenger hunt for kids that involves looking for rats in every room. Stuffed Ikea rats, in fact, which we have a couple of at home.
There’s dress-up of course:
And some games and toys from old times outside in the courtyard:
And then we spent the rest of the day on our third and final Treasure Trail:
The route took us past the church:
….all through the (very pretty!) town:
….along this little stream (with ducks!) and right past our AirBnb:
So, again, a great way to explore the town and see parts of it we wouldn’t have otherwise. Our Bakewell days were among the rainiest of our trip, so we spent some time ducking in and out of buildings during the day. Fortunately, there was a conveniently placed coffee shop, where we had cookies and tea and cocoa:
And then we finished up with dinner at The Woodyard:
The food here was good, but the service was almost comically slow and indifferent. We were also pretty much the only people in the restaurant except for a big group having some kind of party, so it was a bit awkward. In retrospect, I wish we’d gone with one of the local pub recommendations from our AirBnb hosts. Ah well.
Our second day was our big adventure! At some point before the trip I’d read that you can walk from Bakewell to Chatsworth House, which is one of those ridiculously big and fancy houses like they have in Downton Abbey and Pride and Prejudice (in fact, we found out, Chatsworth the house that stood in for Mr. Darcy’s Pemberly in the 2005 Pride and Prejudice movie). The idea of a lovely walk through the English countryside was even more appealing once Dave lost his license. From our Airbnb to Chatsworth was, I believe around 3 1/2 to 4 miles. Eight miles round trip sounded a little daunting with Abe, but we discovered that there’s a bus that runs between Chatsworth and Bakewell, so we decided we’d walk there and take the bus back.
So hiking in England and Ireland is different from hiking in the US. For one thing, they don’t call it hiking, they just call it walking. And I think everyone in England must walk about 20 miles a day, because they don’t regard four miles as anything at all. The woman we talked to at the visitors’ centre in Bakewell told us it was “an easy walk.” Most of it was easy (except for how we had to navigate around SO MUCH sheep poop) but there was a part near the beginning, going through the woods, that was SUPER steep and a little treacherous (particularly because this was another rainy day, so things were pretty slippery):
We were a little worried about getting lost, because the directions sounded pretty vague, but it turned out to be fairly clear most of the time which way we should be going. From town, you cross over a golf course and then head into the woods for the very hilly part of the walk:
At a couple of points you get to climb steps to get over fences, which, we learned, are called stiles.
Much of the walk is through sheep filled pastures, which would have been idyllic were it not for all the poop. This part of the trail was pretty well-trafficked, and we met a few nice dogs. One came bounding up to us enthusiastically and his human told us, “everyone give him a stroke or he’ll be in a grump all day.” So we did.
Eventually you catch your first glimpse of Chatsworth House in the distance:
As you get near the grounds, you pass through the little village of Edensor. We read that Edensor used to be in a different spot, until the 6th Duke of Devonshire had it moved in the 19th century, because it was messing with the view from Chatsworth House. Edsenor turned out to be having a festival that day, to which they were charging admission, but we came in a back way and didn’t realize it until we were all the way through. We didn’t stay and do festive stuff, though; we just walked through:
And then we made it to Chatsworth!
Admission to Chatsworth House is fairly steep (a family ticket for 2 adults and up to 3 kids that includes the house, gardens, and farmyard is 66 pounds), but you can easily fill a full day here. We started out touring the house itself. There’s a very detailed multimedia tour included, with far more information than we had time to listen to. It didn’t have a separate kid-focused audio tour, but there was content appropriate for kids scattered throughout (things to look for in the different rooms, etc.) Unfortunately, Abe was not at his best for much of our tour, so we didn’t get to do much of that.
But we did do the “Chatswoof” scavenger hunt! They were having a special exhibit about dogs, with tons and tons of dog-focused art throughout the house, and there was a booklet for kids to go through and find particular dog clues in each room, then tell one of the guides about it to collect cards. It was adorable.
So Chatsworth itself was satisfyingly completely over the top. I mean….LOOK:
One of the guides saw Milo admiring a Steinway in one of the rooms and invited him to play it, which he did for a few minutes. I had moved on the next room and heard Edvard Grieg’s “Puck” from the piano and thought, “that sounds awfully familiar.” So that was exciting.
There was a big gift shop with (while we were there) a big selection of dog-themed stuff, which was handy for shopping for a gift for my dog-loving mom who was pet sitting for us back home. And there were also a couple of rooms at the end with kid-friendly, dog-focused activities set up:
And an indoor sculpture garden with a lion to take Ari’s picture with:
Then we headed out to the gardens, which are just as impressive as the house itself:
There’s an old mine tunnel you can walk through:
And a hedge maze:
And then we headed over to the Farmyard and Playground, which were more extensive than I had expected. If you’re looking for a fun day out with small kids, you could easily skip the inside house tour and just do the farmyard and playground for £26 for a family. By the time we got over here, it was pretty rainy and we didn’t have too long before we had to catch a bus. But we had time to see BABY PIGS!
And other animals:
Abe rode a toy car:
And milked a fake cow:
The playground was really nice:
And it had a zipline!
After a few turns on the zipline, it was time to head over to the bus stop. Figuring out which bus to take was a little confusing, and our bus ended up being pretty late (while we waited in the cold rain), but we finally got on. It was a red double decker bus, which was exciting, since we hadn’t gotten around to riding one in London. Then the bus driver went to pull out and….ran into a fence. Oops. But the bus was still functional, if sort of scratched up, so she called whoever one calls after scraping against a fence and got the go ahead to drive us all back to Bakewell. Where we ate some dinner, finally picked up some Bakewell pudding to try, and packed up to leave for Ireland the next morning!
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