The Peak District from Liverpool

Editor's note

One night for Buxton and Jodrell Bank. Stand under the Lovell Telescope, the 76m dish of 1957 that is still the third largest steerable radio telescope in the world, and watch it move; the First Light Pavilion tells the story of 1957, when the dish tracked the rocket that launched Sputnik. In Buxton, taste the spring, which rises at a steady 28°C, at St Ann's Well opposite John Carr's Crescent of the 1780s. See Frank Matcham's Opera House of 1903, walk the Pavilion Gardens and go underground in Poole's Cavern.

Editor's note

Two nights for Castleton and Hathersage. Peak Cavern at Castleton has the largest cave entrance in Britain, where ropemakers lived and worked until 1915. Climb Mam Tor (517m), ringed by Iron Age ramparts, and walk the broken road below, closed in 1979 by a landslip that is still moving. Blue John, the banded purple and yellow fluorspar, is found nowhere else in the world and is still mined in the valley. Give a day to Stanage Edge, the gritstone escarpment above Hathersage, with North Lees Hall, the model for Thornfield in Jane Eyre, below it and the Longshaw Estate to the south.

Editor's note

One night for Chatsworth and Bakewell. The house has belonged to the Cavendish family since 1549; Bess of Hardwick began the first great house here in 1553, and the 4th Earl began rebuilding it in 1687. Tour it, then walk the gardens the 4th Duke remade in the 18th century and the park along the Derwent. Five kilometres west, Bakewell has been a market town since 1254: cross the Wye on its five-arched 13th-century bridge and eat a Bakewell pudding in the town where it was created.

Editor's note

One last night on the south-west edge of the Peak District before heading back to Liverpool for the crossing home. Walk the gritstone ridge of the Roaches and find the Winking Man, the rock that seems to wink at drivers on the A53. To the east, walk to Thor's Cave, the cave mouth in a limestone cliff above the Manifold Valley, and cycle the Manifold Trail along the old railway line. The market town of Leek lies between the two.