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Derbyshire 2026 - Bakewell Delight (Day 1)

We'd had some time booked off work in March for a while before considering going on holiday. The decision to go away started with an idea of going away for 'just a couple of days' but, thanks to some oversights in our planning, we ended up extending it to a full five days to ensure that we could do everything we wanted to do. Interestingly, we both thought separately about where to go and managed to come up with the same idea of a location - Bakewell! So, our trip to Derbyshire of course had to start there. 

We headed towards Bakewell late morning after detouring via St Helen's for an appointment, and made it in perfect time to commence our planned walk with a pit stop halfway for lunch. Shannon had seen a few videos on TikTok of the Monsal trail, which is a very popular walking route in the Peak District constructed on parts of a former railway. It seems that there are many different routes you can take to enjoy the trail, and our started at Bakewell Bridge car park, up Station Road towards Bakewell Station, along towards and then through Headstone tunnel and out onto Monsal Viaduct. From here, we headed across some fields to the west of Thornbridge Hall and Estate down towards Ashford-in-the-Water, past Ashford lake and weirs, and back into Bakewell. The total route was approximaetly 12 km and took about 3 hours (allowing for a bit of a detour when we weren't quite following the instructions correctly). It offered some spectacular views of the Peak District and was a brilliant way to start our week.





Once we made it back into Bakewell, we spent some time wandering through the village and around the shops, then stopped off in the Old Original Bakewell Pudding Shop. We treated ourselves to a strawberry milkshake each and shared the 'Best of Both Worlds' in the restaurant, which offered an individual serving of both Bakewell Pudding and Bakewell Tart for us to try, served with custard. For Shannon having not tried Bakewell Pudding before, this was a great opportunity for her taste before we considered buying one, and she definitely wouldn't have been content missing out on a taster of Bakewell Tart either, so this was the perfect treat to share. It definitely helped make our minds up about what we were going to buy as well from the bakery - a freshly baked Bakewell Pudding and a packaged Bakewell Tart to take home. It was great that they also offered longer life options of the two classic bakes as this meant that we could get one to take home for Nicole's mum as well without worrying it wouldn't keep. 

Once we had finished in Bakewell, we headed to our first of two AirBnBs. We had chosen to stay at Oliver's place, which was a cosy cottage in the centre of Matlock which provided everything we needed for a couple of nights away. 

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