The last stop of our two week staycation Honeymoon was the Peak District. We chose to stop here partly to break up the journey from Cornwall back up to Edinburgh, but also as it is a place we had always wanted to visit with it’s impressive landscape and places to visit such as Chatsworth (we do love a visiting country houses!).

We stayed in a lovely country hotel, The Peacock at Rowsley, which sits on the edge of the Chatsworth estate. It is a small/medium sized hotel, full of character and was wonderfully cosy while we were there in October. Our room was situated at the front of the hotel which meant we had a beautiful period bay window, plus a lovely fire place. We arrived quite late in the after noon after a long drive up from Cornwall, so we spent the afternoon sitting in the cosy lounge reading, and enjoying the tastiest complementary shortbread. We ate in the hotel bar that night which was really good, more bistro than standard bar food so still quite a treat.

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After a hearty breakfast the next day we set off for a days hiking at Kinder Scout – which is covered in a separate blog post. The views are very much worth the climb, it’s such a fantastic place that we really enjoyed exploring. We were pretty tired and hungry after our walk so we stopped off on the way back at The Devonshire Arms at Baslow, only a 10 minute drive up the road from our hotel. The food here was really good, just what we needed after a long day.

On our second day in the Peak District we had booked to go to Chatsworth House, which is only 5 minutes drive away. One of the perks of staying at The Peacock is discounted admission so make sure you speak to reception before going. The drive up to the house through the estate is lovely, and we were lucky to see a large number of deer including stags on our drive. We arrived mid-morning and were slightly early for our ticket time so took the opportunity to explore the shop – which had a huge array of gifts and souvenirs, plus some lovely Christmas decorations. As the house is still lived in the areas open to the public are limited but you do get to see some of the impressive state rooms. We spent around an hour exploring the house before heading out into the gardens – which was the bit we were really looking forward to.

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The gardens at Chatsworth are very impressive and cover a large area – not including the extensive estate which is also open to the public. We spent at least another hour walking round the gardens admiring the woodland and also more manicured beds, plus the giant rockery and kitchen garden are amazing. Even if you are not a gardening fanatic there is something very majestic about the cascade and also the fountain. I would love to visit the garden again in other seasons, it was so inspiring.

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After touring the house and gardens we went for a walk in the grounds of the estate – you could walk for miles in any direction and we wished we had allowed more time and been better prepared to do so. The parkland is a beautiful setting and we would like to go back to explore more. We did take a trip to the Farm shop which is full of tempting treats! We bought a few items such as local cheese, and I cannot recommend highly enough the blackcurrant jam – hands down the best I’ve ever had!

From Chatsworth we traveled across country to visit the town of Bakewell – with one primary aim, to buy a Bakewell tart! The town has quite a few shops, including a number of good outdoor equipment shops so a good place to stock up before venturing out into the hills. We had a spot of lunch and then achieved our goal of getting our tart. We didn’t eat it til we were home from our trip but it was worth the wait, the buttery pastry and delicious filling was a dream.

We ate in our hotel that night as we had booked their tasting menu. This was very good, it was basically all the dishes from their main menu but smaller so you could enjoy them all. A lovely last meal of our trip.

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