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| The bus route map for the Peak District |
When joining the Sheffield U3A Geology Group back in 2015, although I was a long way away from retirement, it provided me with a great opportunity to explore places that I could not easily visit without having a car – as when undertaking the recce of Tansley Dale, Cressbrook Dale and the Tideswell dolerite quarry for our field trip in June 2024 with my friend Stuart.
My next day out to the Peak District National Park, 10 days later, was to visit the spectacular landform of Rowtor Rocks in Birchover, explore old quarries and the Nine Ladies stone circle on Stanton Moor and then undertake a British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge at Stanton-in-Peak.
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| Listed buildings in Stanton-in-Peak |
Having spent the past 9 years travelling widely using a travel pass that was prescribed to me to help combat the clinical depression that I had been suffering since living in Rotherham, due to the lack of work suited to my interests and experience - acquired in the specialist building restoration industry in London - I had become used to undertaking three separate journeys each way on my days out and often combining it with a good walk.
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| The No. 218 bus timetable |
Many of my trips in the Peak District have started from Bakewell and the TM Travel No. 218 bus route from Sheffield, which runs every 30 minutes, is a tried and tested service and it is always a great pleasure to take in the views while sitting in the front seat on the top deck – even though its reliability has been the subject of many complaints by regular users in recent years.
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| The No. 172 bust timetable |
Looking at the No. 172 timetable operated by Hulleys of Baslow, which ceased trading in March 2025 and now has its routes taken over by Andrews of Tideswell, the bus follows a very circuitous route around several remote villages to the south and west of the A6 road and the only bus that I could realistically catch was the 12:20 service, to arrive in Birchover at 12:55, with the first suitable return journey from Stanton-in-Peak being 16:32, which did not fit in very well with the timing of the buses back to Sheffield and Treeton.
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| The route of the No. 172 bus between Bakewell and Darley Dale |
An alternative that came to mind was to see if I could catch the No. 172 bus at 11:17 am from the Whitworth Institute bus stop in Darley Dale, on its way from Matlock to Bakewell. On previous days out to Buxton and Ashford-in-the Water, I had made use of the Transpeak service that runs along the A6 from Buxton to Derby via Bakewell and also The Sixes service which runs between Bakewell and Derby when travelling to and from Haddon Hall and Rowsley.
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| The Transpeak bus timetable |
The timing of this hourly Transpeak bus service would have meant that I would have to hang around for nearly an hour in Bakewell, which was far from ideal as I had already photographed very nearly all of the buildings outstanding on previous Photo Challenges here.
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| The Sixes bus timetable |
By catching The Sixes bus at 10:30 am, however, I would arrive at the Whitworth Institute in Darley Dale at 10:41 am, which gave me just over 35 minutes to have a quick look at Whitworth Park and photograph some of the buildings thrown up by the Photo Challenge post code search in the near vicinity of the bus stop.
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| Listed buildiings in the vicinity of the Whitworth Institute bus stop |
This detailed planning was very time consuming but enabled me to start my exploration over an hour earlier and gave me more flexibility at the end of the day - to do a bit of essential shopping at the Co-Op or even have a couple of pints in the Red Lion should it take my fancy and, most importantly, get me back to Sheffield and then to Treeton before the cuts to the evening services on the two notoriously unreliable X54 and No. 73 buses kicked in.
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| The walk from Birchover to the A6 |
Although I had solved the problem of getting to Birchover at the earliest opportunity, I still had to work out the best way of getting back to Bakewell, as the No.172 bus timetable didn’t provide any easy options, with a good 7.5 km walk from Birchover to the A6 looking most likely.
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| The Ordnance Survey map of the area around Stanton Moor |
When living in Bakewell, back in 1995, I had visited Stanton Moor when assessing the geotourism potential of the RIGS (Regionally Important Geological Sites) in the Peak District National Park and my girlfriend kept her horse at Birchover, but I had never explored the area on foot; however, as for all of the walks that I have undertaken in the countryside, the online Ordnance Survey (OS) 1:25,000 map provided by Bing shows the public footpaths.
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| The OS map of the area between Stanton-in-Peak and the A6 |
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