Hartington

Hotels are limited within Hartington itself, so most visitors either book one of the village's small guesthouses and B&Bs or base themselves a short drive away in Buxton or Ashbourne, both of which offer a wider choice of larger hotels. Within the village, options tend to be traditional stone-built guesthouses and inns with only a handful of rooms, giving a quieter, more personal stay than a big hotel but with less flexibility on dates in peak season. Hartington Hall's youth hostel, set in a 17th-century manor house once home to the Bateman family, is a distinctive and affordable alternative for solo travellers, families or groups happy to trade hotel service for historic surroundings and hostel-style rooms.

Because Hartington sits close to Dovedale, Wolfscote Dale and Beresford Dale, a hotel or guesthouse here works well as a base for several days of walking without much driving between routes. Buxton, around nine miles north, has a broader spread of hotels from budget to boutique along with its own spa-town attractions, while Ashbourne to the south offers a similar range and easy access to the southern end of Dovedale. Wherever you stay, booking ahead is sensible for spring and summer weekends, when the White Peak's dales draw walkers from across the Midlands and beyond and the smaller village accommodation fills quickly.

Hartington rewards slow visits as much as active ones, with excellent walking on the doorstep and a couple of genuinely distinctive attractions in the village itself.

• Hartington Cheese Shop — a stone shop overlooking the duck pond that has sold Hartington Stilton and other local cheeses for more than thirty years, and the reason many people first hear of the village at all.
• Hartington Hall — a 17th-century manor house, once home to the Bateman family, that has operated as a youth hostel since 1934; its gardens and grounds are worth a look even if you are not staying.
• Beresford Dale and Charles Cotton's Fishing House — a short walk south of the village along the Dove leads to this steep-sided dale and the small stone fishing lodge built in 1674 by the writer Charles Cotton, marked with the entwined initials of Cotton and his friend Izaak Walton over the door.
• Wolfscote Dale — a longer, quieter limestone gorge north of Beresford Dale, popular with walkers looking for river scenery without Dovedale's footfall.
• Dovedale — a short drive or a longer walk away, with its stepping stones and the dramatic outcrop of Thorpe Cloud; best tackled early or out of season.
• St Giles' Church — a 12th-century parish church with a western tower and a reredos carved from local Derbyshire marble.
• Tissington Trail — a former railway line converted to a traffic-free path for walking and cycling, with an access point a few miles from Hartington.

The Devonshire Arms on the market place is the village's long-standing pub, serving food and local ales in a stone-flagged setting near the pond. The Charles Cotton Hotel, named after the Beresford Dale writer, offers another village option for a meal or a drink. For provisions and something to take home, Hartington Cheese Shop remains the obvious stop, selling Hartington Stilton alongside other local and regional cheeses, and a village bakery and general stores cover picnic supplies for a day out in the dales.

Camping around Hartington means official sites rather than wild camping: wild camping is illegal in England without the landowner's permission, and the Peak District National Park asks visitors to stick to recognised campsites, of which there are several within easy reach of the village. The White Peak's limestone terrain shapes what camping here is like — thin, well-drained soils, dry valleys, and dales cut steeply into the rock, so most sites are set on the gentler pasture above the gorges rather than down in them, with the dales themselves reserved for walking rather than pitching a tent.

The best season for camping around Hartington runs from late spring to early autumn. Ground conditions are driest and firmest from May through September, days are long enough for a full walk in Wolfscote Dale, Beresford Dale or further afield to Dovedale before returning to camp, and the local pubs and the Hartington Cheese Shop are all open on their usual hours. Outside that window, sites in the area tend to be quieter but exposed to the Peak District's changeable weather, and some smaller sites close over winter altogether, so it is worth checking opening dates before planning a trip outside the main season.

For those who want the outdoors experience without a tent, glamping has grown steadily across this part of Derbyshire, with pods, shepherd's huts and safari tents available on farms within a few miles of Hartington. These typically offer proper beds, heating and sometimes en-suite facilities while keeping the same views over dry-stone walls and limestone pasture that make the area popular with campers, and they extend the comfortable camping season further into spring and autumn than a standard tent pitch would allow.