Castleton: Mines, hills and wonky roads

Took another day trip with my dad and sister last Sunday, this time to the little Peak District village of Castleton.

Well, I say Castleton. We parked out the far end of the village past the Treak Cliff Cavern and I'd recommend everyone did so - parking is fairly limited in the village itself (there's two or three car parks, at varying prices per hour) and parking on the road leading out of the village towards the famous caves is metered until you get nearly a mile out. So being the cheapskates we are, we parked up at the end of the old Mam Tor road.

Nice little spot of lunch and then we set off for a walk. The weather wasn't looking too great - black clouds kept drifting over but fortunately we missed the rain. First up we took a quick stroll up to what we think was part of the Odin Mine.

The photo above is from the little cave near the old mine workings called Odin Cave. The mine itself is down this 'ere ravine.

Supposedly the mine was worked as far back as the Roman occupation, so potentially nearly 2,000 years. Wikipedia (un)reliably informs me that the first reference to the mine was in 1280 and is the oldest documented lead mine in Derbyshire and possibly even in England. Pretty impressive. I would have liked to explore a bit down the ravine, but it was absolutely sodden - obviously the rain water just collects down there - so we gave it a miss.

Oh my, British Summer!

Odin Mine appreciated we set off up the hill along the route of the old Mam Tor road. Geology lesson ahoy, feel free to skip. The rocks of Mam Tor, the "Mother Hill", are in the region of 320 million years old. The layers at the bottom are shales, which forms in thin sheets (hence why we use it for roof tiles), overlain with sandstone. Said shales are just a little bit unstable. Just a bit...

You'll note I said we were following the route of the old Mam Tor road. The old Mam Tor road being the former A625 between Sheffield and Chapel-en-le-Frith on the other side of the Peak District National Park. Those unstable shales underlying the sandstone of the upper part of Mam Tor have caused a landslip of the hill that started at least 3,000 years ago. The road builders in their great wisdom decided to build their road straight across the landslip. Oh yeah. Look what happened to it.

This one might give you more idea of just how far the road has slipped - using my sister for scale.

Nice. So the road now goes another way around Mam Tor. Got to say though, there's so much tarmac left of the old road it makes it a nice easy walk up the hill from the Odin Mine at the bottom(ish) to the Blue John Cavern where the road used to go.

We decided against going up to the top of the Tor - black clouds flew in again and we got a few spots of rain - and instead made our way back down to the road past the Treak Cliff Cavern. If you're interested, there's an old hill fort at the top, which I'd love to have a poke around at some point. Not that I imagine you can see much of it...

Some beautiful views of the Tor (and my dad and sister) from the track we took from the Blue John Cavern down to the road.

And then just past the Treak Cliff Cavern I spotted this lovely looking crag (all the geology/geography feels).

Anyhoo... short walk back up the road to the car and then a very short drive into the village to find the loos and to raid the fudge shop we'd spotted on the way through earlier. Point to note here: there's parking at the Peak Hotel that's fairly cheap but it's only a tiny car park. I believe you can get your money back if you spend more than £10 in the pub... if the sign was right...

Anyway, nice clean facilities at the National Park visitor centre on the main road, plus a free little museum in the visitor centre itself. Worth checking out if you want to know a bit more about the history of the Peaks and whatnot.

Finally, we made a quick trip to one of the little shops and acquired some fudge. Nice, but not as good as the stuff from the Remarkables Sweet Shop in Arrowtown, New Zealand. And then, sadly, it was time to leave.

All in all, a nice little trip, but I'd have liked to have spent the whole day there. As it was, we didn't get there until after 1pm so we didn't really have time to do that much. There's some beautiful walking up there and a whole host of little places to visit. From past experience, it's worth checking out the caves - I've done the Blue John Cavern many years ago, but I'd imagine Treak Cliff, Peak and Speedwell are also interesting - and Peveril Castle, which is perched up on top of a cliff overlooking Castleton.

At least we had nice weather!