Like a precious jewel set in a crown, the Peak District offers its visitors the experience of a lifetime.

Situated in the hilly north-western part of the County of Derbyshire, with the glorious Peak District National Park at its centre, the visitor is free to explore and enjoy a truly unique and timeless landscape that is liberally dotted here and there by an assortment of picturesque towns, villages and tiny hamlets, each of which is steeped in its own fascinating and historical background.

This magnificent and quite breath-taking scenery has a broad limestone plateau at its centre, which in turn is cut by long open dry valleys, dales surmounted by bare lofty cliff faces, and valleys filled with slow meandering woodland streams.

In turn, all of this is surrounded by the formidable heights of the mysterious and dark heather-clad grit stone, here represented by places with odd sounding names like, the Roaches, Goyt Valley, Combs Moss, Kinder Scout, Bleaklow, Stanage Edge and Big Moor.

Whether travelling here by train, car, bicycle, on foot or even on horse-back, the Peak District can be explored by almost any means utilizing one of thousands of roads, lanes, track ways and footpaths that thread their way in from its outer edge, right into the very heart of this truly magical landscape.

The Peak District tries its best to cater for all ages and tastes. If you are one of those who love to while away a few hours in the busier towns, like Buxton, Bakewell or Matlock with their shops and bright night life, you won’t be disappointed.

Instead, you may prefer the smaller villages and hamlets, places that offer a certain kind of peace and tranquillity that is rarely found elsewhere today, somewhere to take a quiet lunch, drink or afternoon tea.

Then there are the most sought after places, those that offer a chance to literally get away from it all and leave the roads and rat race far behind.

This is where those who enjoy the outdoors can really come into their element.

For these people, there is trout fishing in the rivers Wye, Derwent, Dove and the Noe. For the more adventurous there is caving and the extreme sports of rock climbing, para and hang gliding or mountain biking. Should you prefer more leisurely pursuits, then you’ll find excellent subjects waiting for you to paint or photograph.

There are so many other ways to enjoy this scenery: botanical forays to the many sites of special scientific interest, SSSIs, or you could hunt down the history of lead mining, with its hundreds of years of social history.

There are a host of other wonderful treats that lay in wait for your visit to the memorable landscape that is the Peak District.