An itinerary of landscape photography locations in the Peak District if you only have one day. Including parking locations via Google Maps.
A friend of mine rang last week. After a bit of a chat he told me that he and his girlfriend were going into the Peak District over Easter and asked where I’d recommend going. They had one day off together and wanted to see as much as possible. I made a few suggestions and we put together a plan, this was mainly sightseeing rather than photography. After the call finished though, I got to thinking, ‘if I was a photographer who had just one day in the Peak District, where would I go and what would I photograph?’.
So on Tuesday, I woke up with no jobs booked in for the day (processing can wait, right!), and with this thought in mind, I set off at 6.30am to head into the Peak District to see what I could fit into just one day.
I had no real plan, other than a general idea for a first destination. Weather dependent I’d either stop at Mam Tor or head to Padley Gorge. About 40 minutes into my drive, a few miles shy of Mam Tor, I could see that the weather wasn’t looking great and there were grey clouds overhead, onwards to Padley Gorge then.
The bridge over Burbage Brook
Gateway to the Gorge
8am: Padley Gorge (Parking Location - https://maps.app.goo.gl/Pat3rT23FgkWkhyCA)
It was still fairly dim when I arrived at Padley Gorge. The grey clouds above had started to drizzle and with only one other car in the parking bays, it was obviously quiet. So quiet in fact that I only saw a couple of dog walkers during the whole walk through Padley, although by the time I’d get back to the car, there were a few more parked up.
One of the only people I saw that morning in Padley Gorge
There’s loads to photograph in Padley Gorge. You could take a full day here and still not photograph everything that you wanted to. But, this morning, I just wasn’t feeling it. It was a flat morning, no interplay of light and shadow, no colour other than green, no mist or fog to create some fantasy, just pretty bland.
Of course, I still had my camera in hand as I walked through the woodland, grabbing a few shots as I went. The water of the brook was in full flow and there’s loads of mini waterfalls, and a couple of larger ones too, but again I just wasn’t feeling them this morning. Nevertheless the walk was still an excellent one, I made it down Burbage Brook to the cut through to Bolehill Quarry before circling round and heading back up the higher shelf and hitting the trail back to my start point.
You could extend the walk through Padley Gorge to take in Bolehill Quarry too
The gate through to Bolehill Quarry. Not one that I went through on this day, but worth a visit it you have the time.
Not a great start to the day photography wise, but still a mesmerising place to visit and a good bit of exercise to get my day started. As I arrived back it was still only 10am, so I poured myself a coffee and had a glance at the map to find my next destination, a place I’d only ever visited once, a very long time ago, a place with some tales to tell and some history to document.
11am: Magpie Mine (Parking Location - https://maps.app.goo.gl/Sp2SQc1Befz9kiZS6)
If Magpie Mine had a coffee shop, some toilets and better parking, I’m pretty sure this would be a coach tour magnet. As it is, it doesn’t, so it isn’t. All the better for me then! Parking roadside I walked the couple of minutes down the drive to the site of the old mine. There’s some information boards scattered around the place telling the tales of the mines and some really interesting history - I love a bit of history so places like this are fascinating to me.
There are plenty of information boards to tell you what each building or piece of equipment were used for at Magpie Mine
By now, the sun was well up in the sky but the weather was all over the place. Dark clouds one minute, bright blue sky and white clouds the next. The constant however was haziness. It was really hazy, which would remain the case throughout the day, and the light that was hitting the landscape was specular. In retrospect I should have been walking round with a poloriser on the front of my lens but I wasn’t really thinking about it at the time, this trip was more about the journey than the photography.
I left the car with just my camera and 16-35 lens, figuring that I’d just head back to grab something different if I needed it. I didn’t. The few shots here were all taken with that combo and I felt was enough of a haul to have warranted the journey, nothing great but a nice photographic story from this leg of my one day in the Peak District.
The wind was high and the clouds were ever moving.
The old lead mine still has plenty of rubble piling high
If you were heading here for some serious photography then the mine shafts and chimneys make for a lovely foreground for some astro-photography and there’s some lovely documentary style photography to be had too. This is a good stop for history buffs and you might give it 90 minutes to 2 hours here, for me, I’d seen it before so an hour was sufficient. It was lunch time, so time to head off to a scenic vista to make my pot noodle, another coffee and fuel myself up for the afternoon.
12.30pm: Monsal Head (Parking Location - https://maps.app.goo.gl/X1XR1rAZeU9J2rmi6)
Having photographed Monsal Dale and the Headstone Viaduct twice before, I didn’t even take my camera out of the car this time around, the shot here is from my phone. But it’s a lovely view and there’s plenty of benches to sit and have lunch looking out over the view below.
A quick iPhone shot. A lovely view to have whilst lunching.
Although Monsal Dale is a site of scientific special interest, the view is dominated by the viaduct. A source of great controversy when it was built in the mid-1800’s, it was described at the time as ‘defiling the Dale’. Built to carry rail line to connect Buxton to Bakewell it’s now fully paved and forms part of the Monsal Trail. The Monsal Trail is a traffic free 8.5 mile stretch for walkers, runners, cyclists, horse riders and wheelchair users. It utilises the old rail route and walking the trail will take you through the old tunnels that run under the hilltops.
The Dale itself is beautiful and the River Wye which runs through it is home to loads of species of life. Well worth a trip but for me on this occassion, with lunch and coffee consumed, it was onwards to my next destination. A place I had never been before and I was looking forward to having a good explore of the rather quaint little village only a mile or so from Monsal Dale.
1.45pm: Ashford in the Water (Parking Location - https://maps.app.goo.gl/ssAyg6UCvmQGTQQD6)
The River Wye runs down from Monsal Dale through Ashford in the Water and as I’d been driving from Magpie Mine to Monsal Head for my lunch, I’d spotted some lovely looking daffodils blooming on the river banks. Had I not, I probably wouldn’t have called into the village. But I’m glad I did.
What a quaint little place. I had a wander around the church yard, with it’s gravestone marking those who had lived in the village hundreds of years past, through a recreational area, complete with ‘netted’ goalposts, something that would never be left out in the city (if you want nets in a city park, you have to buy them yourself), and eventually finding myself at the beautiful Sheepwash Bridge, the place I had fleetingly spotted from roadside.
I grabbed my camera from the car, again just camera and 16-35mm lens and spent no more than five minutes photographing. I’ve seen shots of the bridge before, and whilst it’s lovely, there was nothing new I was going to capture today, but the daffodils only bloom for a few weeks of the year so including those would give me something timely to add to the story of my day.
Sheepwash Bridge. The name should be taken literally as this bridge was used to herd sheep to have their fleeces washed.
I grabbed my shot whilst another photographer looked on. We had a lovely chat, he was on holiday and had a couple of days in the Peak District, maybe this blog might have proven useful to him if I’d written it earlier! As I walked back across the bridge towards the car, I glanced back and saw him setting up in the exact spot I’d just been. And why not, it’s a decent shot…..I’ve often found it funny how in some circles of landscape photography, there’s a belief that shot locations or compositions belong to the photographer. They don’t. Daffodils will bloom in that spot long after I’m gone, they belong to the land, not me.
Half an hour spent in Ashford in the Water was to be enough for today. It was time to move onto a bigger landscape, a more iconic landscape, for a quick snapshot or two.
2:40pm: Jerichos View (Parking Location - https://maps.app.goo.gl/RfnXUERkQeqeYyfv9)
I’ve called this Jerichos View because of the painting the adorns the roadside at this location, named after Jerichos Farm located on this road. This is the view of Chrome Hill and Parkhouse Hill, otherwise known as the Dragons Back, two of the true peaks within the Peak District. It’s odd to think of them as peaks though from this angle as both ground in a valley seated far below the surrounding hill line, the tops from this view hardly seem prominent.
I’d travelled past this viewpoint several times on my various journeys to Earl Sterndale, a good base spot for a hike over Hitter Hill to photograph Parkhouse and Chrome, or to continue over them. But I’d never actually stopped to admire the view from here. There’s a clearing roadside to park the car on and I jumped out, attached the 70-200mm lens onto the front of my camera and over the course of 5 minutes or so, grabbed a sweeping panoramic, purposely employing a car driving along the road to give a little more story to what might otherwise, with the flat hazy light of the late winter day, have been a mono-coloured bland boring wide vista with no anchoring focal point.
Jerichos View, so named because of the farmhouse that looks over it.
Again, perhaps a poloriser would have been helpful here with the sky and that specular light. Nevertheless a lovely viewpoint of an iconic Peak District landscape. And with that I jumped back in the car, ready for the 30 minute journey to my last location of the day, one which I know well but haven’t been for a little while.
3:20pm: The Roaches (Parking Location - https://maps.app.goo.gl/hRTrPJGc2KVD4166A)
Unlike any of the locations since Padley Gorge, The Roaches would require walking boots and the full kit to come along. Parking at the Hen Cloud end of The Roaches, I first up went to take a shot of the lone tree that sits there. I’ve photographed the tree loads of times before, but today I took a walk down the road to capture it looking in the direction of Macclesfield rather than Leek. I then headed up the footpath onto the top of The Roaches, heading to Doxy Pool for a shot I had in mind there.
The lone tree which sits at the base of The Roaches
The walk up onto The Roaches. Thankfully there are several steps carved into the crags
To my upmost surprise though, as I arrived on top at Doxy Pool, I found it fenced off and inaccessible. Even the shot I had in mind, which didn’t require me to get close to the pool would be impossible due to the intrusive fencing that surrounded the area.
Upon reading the signage I completely understood the need to do this. The banks of the pool had been eroded by people and pets over the years and it had been cordoned off to allow nature to rehabit the water and the banks to reform. Absolutely right too, but it doesn’t bode well for photographers for the next couple of years.
Closed
A shot I’ve taken before, so I just used my iPhone to create this image
As I headed back along the higher shelf, I stopped for a quick look out over Tittesworth Resrvoir, having a shot from there already, I just created another quick image of a lovely scene using my iPhone before taking the route along the back of the Roaches to grab a shot from high of the ‘haunted’ barn.
The ‘Haunted’ Barn on the back of The Roaches
Clambering down into the forest, I had a quick check to see if sunset was looking promising, it wasn’t so I walked down by the base of Hen Cloud back to roadside.
I arrived back at the car just as the light was dipping at 5.50pm quite pleased with my days excursion. Hitting six landscape photography locations in one day is no small feat and was only possible because, by now, I know the areas so well. And that’s why I thought I’d share the day and the locations with you.
I kept my time at each location quite tight, but this is still late winter with just about 10.5 hours of light. As we head further into Spring and Summer, even early to mid-Autumn, you’d be able to spend longer at each place, having a good explore. Or even throw in another quick location or two (Blake Mere - The Mermaid Pool - is a roadside location easy to navigate to between Jerichos View and The Roaches).
If you have one day in the Peak District on a photography centric excursion, then this is just one itinerary that you could choose to follow. I warn you, it was a bit tough on the old legs at times, my phone clocked me at a little over 25k steps that day, I felt it the next day (and the day after!). But it was worth it, and I even got a brand new location at Ashford-in-the-Water in the bag too.
Overall a really great day of landscape photography in the Peak District National Park.
Dave Laffan
March 2024
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