Wonders of the Peak

Buxton Museum & Art Gallery

Geology

View from the Sand Pits

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The view back up to Minninglow from here provides a layer-cake scene through the historical use of this landscape. On the hill’s summit the prehistoric burial site; below that the natural outcrops of limestone (which provided the slabs for those tombs); then stone walls dating back to the enclosure acts of the late eighteenth century; finally the magnificent railway embankment of 1831.

The view of Minninglow Hill © Simon Corble

But what are these huge earthworks in the foreground all about?  A clue lies in the track surface we have just walked over. You may have noticed that, unlike the rest of the route, it was very sandy back there. By a happy accident, a large pocket of very valuable silica sand was discovered just below the surface of the soil and right next to the railway line.

It is part of series of such deposits, stretching in a line between here and Brassington, to the south east. The silica deposits were laid down in the hollows of the limestone by some long vanished river, during the late Miocene Era – around 10 million years ago.

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The Cutting

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Walking through the cutting © Simon Corble

There’s a dramatic change of atmosphere here, as the former railway line slices through a small spur of the hill. At this point we are literally walking through a cross section of the very material of the White Peak: Carboniferous limestone.

Run your hand over the surface of the rock. It can be highly variable across the White Peak but this is tough, top grade building material. Almost certainly the spoil from this cutting was used in one or both of the huge embankments on our route. The builders may indeed have deliberately carved through here to get at the high quality rock rather than take a diversion.

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Milldale

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Milldale © Eamon Curry via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

Limestone is the architect and dominant feature of Dovedale. This pearly grey, 350 million-year-old rock dictates the tone for the whole of this glorious landscape. It was this apparently intractable rock, carved over the millennia by wind, rain, frost and glacial meltwater into the soaring pinnacles, secret caves and free-standing arches we come to see and admire in the gorge today.

Dovedale caves and spires © Alan Feebery via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

These rocky features have provided refuge for our ancient ancestors and the source of inspiration for writers and painters. And it is the limestone which produces the soil that supports rare flora and filters the water to make the river the perfect habitat for trout and other wildlife.

Dovedale is one of the major honeypots of the Peak District National Park, visited by over a million people every year. Visiting on a crisp winter’s day, it’s strange to think that this was all once part of an ancient tropical coral reef.

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Lovers Leap

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Lover’s Leap © Trevor Harris via Geograph (CC BY SA 2.0)

This is a fine place to view the lower portion of Dovedale. Opposite, rising out of the ash woods, you can just make out the rock pinnacles known as the Twelve Apostles.

Pinnacles like these are made of harder bands of limestone that were left were behind after the erosion of the last Ice Age. Over the centuries since then, they have been further shaped into craggy towers by water gradually dissolving the rock or repeatedly freezing in cracks until the rock weakens and crumbles away.

Steps up to Lover’s Leap © Matt Fascione via Geograph (CC BY SA 2.0)

Lover’s Leap gets its name from a girl who attempted suicide from this high point, but was saved by her billowing skirts! The steps up to the high point were said to be built by Italian prisoners of war during World War Two.

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Reynard’s Cave

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Pause where you can see the natural arch of Reynard’s Cave. To find out how it formed we need to travel back to the end of the last Ice Age, around 10,000 years ago, when glacial meltwater swelled the Dove into a powerful torrent. Icy waters cut down through fissures and faults in the rock like a knife through butter. The vertical crags and pinnacles we can see from here are harder bands of limestone that the water could not cut through, but just how did these natural caves and arches form?

Reynard’s Cave © Beth via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)

 

Limestone has many joints and cracks. When acidic rainwater trickles into these joints, it dissolves and widens them into underground drainage systems, including tunnels, caves and caverns. As the river cut down through the limestone it intercepted some of these secret tunnels and caves, opening them up for the first time. Reynard’s Cave is the remnant of just such an old cavern, exposed as the Dove cut down through the limestone.

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Castles in the air

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Alport Dale in the Dark Peak has an air of remote wilderness, enhanced by the tottering towers and eroded rock faces of Alport Castles, said to be the largest
landslip in Britain.

This walk takes us to the lip of the landslip from the neighbouring Upper Derwent Valley to take in the drama of these ‘castles in the air’.

Enjoy one of the geological showplaces and scenic highlights in the Peak District
National Park, in one of its most remote and wild places. Keep your eye out for Peregrine falcon – the area has recently become a nesting site for these majestic birds.

Starting at the car park at Fairholmes Visitor Centre, in the shadow of the Derwent Dam, exit the car park and turn left to walk down the road you have just driven along. After approx 50-100m, follow the marker sign on the right and ascend a path with a stream to your left. Continue to the culverted watercourse where the path splits.

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