If you have one decent day’s walking from a Bakewell cottage and you don’t fancy a hill, the answer is almost always the Monsal Trail. The trail runs along the bed of an old railway between Blackwell Mill near Buxton and Coombs Road just outside Bakewell — eight and a half flat miles of dales, tunnels, viaducts and old station platforms, with almost nothing in the way of climb.
You do not need to walk the whole thing. In fact you probably shouldn’t, unless you have someone to pick you up at the other end. The proper Bakewell-base approach is to walk out for an hour or two, turn around and walk back, and arrive at the cottage in time for a late lunch and a long sit-down.
Starting from the Town
The official trailhead at Coombs Road is a fifteen-minute walk from the centre of Bakewell. You don’t need a car; you just need to find the river path going south, follow it under the old viaduct, and join the trail where it crosses overhead. Most cottages in the town will be twenty minutes’ walk from the trailhead at most.
The route is a former Midland Railway line that closed in the 1960s and reopened as a walking and cycling route a decade or so ago. The full history is well-covered in the Monsal Trail entry for anyone who likes their walks with a little context, but you can do the trail very happily without knowing any of it. The point is that the gradient is gentle, the surface is good, and the views are some of the best in the Peaks.
The Tunnels
The four long tunnels — Headstone, Cressbrook, Litton and Chee Tor — are the trail’s set piece. They were closed and walled up for years after the line shut, and only reopened in 2011. Today they are lit, paved and entirely walkable; you go from bright sunlight into a long cool corridor of stone, and emerge half a kilometre later on the other side of a valley you would otherwise have had to climb.
Take a thin jumper for the tunnels. Even in July they hold the cold of the deep limestone, and the contrast with the heat outside is a small shock the first time you come out. The tunnels are also the parts of the trail children remember; they shout in them and listen for the echo, and then ask if there’s another one coming up.
Where to Turn Around
From Bakewell, the natural turn-around point for a half-day walk is Monsal Head, which is about three miles out. You arrive at the foot of the famous viaduct, climb up the path beside it to the pub at the top, and look back down the dale to the river bending away beneath you. It is one of the great Peak District views, and it costs you nothing in the way of effort.
You can have a coffee at the pub or you can carry on west towards the tunnels. Either way the walk back is the same flat trail you came out on. The legs will not complain. The cottage will be waiting.
What to Take
A flask of tea. A small lunch. A waterproof if the morning looked at all uncertain. Good shoes but nothing dramatic — trainers are fine in dry weather, walking boots in wet. A pocket map is sensible only because the signage at the trail’s edges can be patchy where it meets footpaths down to the villages. Otherwise you cannot really get lost on a disused railway line. You walk one way, you turn around, and you walk back. That is the great mercy of the Monsal Trail.
