Sheffield

Where to base yourself in Sheffield depends largely on how much of the city, and how much of the surrounding hills, you want on your doorstep. Stay in the Cathedral Quarter or around West Street and you can walk to the Millennium Gallery, the Crucible and most of the city's restaurants and bars within minutes, with the tram network on hand for anywhere further out. It suits a short break built around museums, theatre and evenings out, and it is where Sheffield's more polished boutique and business hotels tend to cluster, often in converted Victorian buildings that reflect the city's industrial architecture.

Move a little further out and the character changes. Ecclesall Road and the leafy suburbs towards Broomhill put you among independent cafes and a quieter residential feel, a few minutes by tram or bus from the centre, and generally a calmer choice for a longer stay. Head instead for the villages just beyond the city boundary, towards Grenoside or the Rivelin and Loxley valleys, and you find country house hotels with real grounds, popular for weddings and a slower pace, though you will want a car or a reliable taxi number for evenings in town. Families and those without a car generally do best staying centrally, close to the station and the tram interchange, since Sheffield's hills can make walking between suburbs harder work than the map suggests. Whichever area you choose, book ahead around the World Snooker Championship each spring, when city centre rooms fill quickly, and check whether your hotel has parking, since central spaces are limited and often charged separately from the room rate.

Sheffield rewards a mix of industrial history, green space and moorland walking, and most of its best attractions sit within easy reach of the centre.

• Kelham Island Museum tells the story of Sheffield's steel and cutlery industries around a working River Don engine, one of the largest surviving steam engines in Europe.
• Peak District National Park begins at the city's western edge, with Longshaw Estate, Padley Gorge and the gritstone edge of Stanage all reachable by bus or a short drive for walking and climbing.
• Winter Garden is a vast glasshouse of subtropical planting in the city centre, free to enter and a favourite spot to shelter from Sheffield's weather.
• Millennium Gallery combines touring exhibitions with the Ruskin Collection and a permanent display of Sheffield metalwork, from cutlery to Victorian silverware.
• Weston Park Museum covers natural history, archaeology and social history in a Victorian park setting, with free entry and a strong collection on Sheffield's industrial past.
• Sheffield Botanical Gardens holds nineteen acres of restored Victorian glasshouses and themed gardens above Ecclesall Road, popular for a slow afternoon.
• Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet preserves a complete eighteenth-century water-powered scythe works on the edge of the city, with working machinery on open days.
• Sheffield Cathedral anchors the historic core of the city, a compact medieval and Victorian building with a striking modern extension.

No Sheffield table is complete without a bottle of Henderson's Relish, the city's own tangy, vinegar-based condiment made to a secret recipe since the 1880s and used locally on everything from chips to Yorkshire puddings in place of its Worcestershire rival.

The city has a serious real ale pedigree, home to Thornbridge and Abbeydale breweries among others, and the Kelham Island Tavern and Fat Cat are long-standing favourites for cask beer in the old industrial quarter, alongside a newer wave of craft taprooms.

Cutlery Works, a converted factory on Neepsend Lane, brings together a dozen or so independent food traders under one roof and is one of the city's most popular casual dining destinations, while Moor Market in the centre is the place for fresh produce, a proper pork pie and the kind of no-frills cafe stalls Sheffield does well.

Sharrow Vale and Nether Edge carry a strong reputation for curry houses and neighbourhood restaurants, reflecting Sheffield's diverse communities, and the annual Sheffield Food Festival in the Peace Gardens each September gives visitors a concentrated taste of the city's producers and independent kitchens.

Sheffield itself has no campsites to speak of within the built-up city, but the Peak District National Park begins at its western edge, and the wider South Yorkshire and Peak District countryside around the city offers a reasonable spread of options within a half-hour's drive. The terrain shifts quickly from the city's terraced streets to open moorland and limestone dale, so sites within a few miles of Sheffield tend to be exposed, breezy and best suited to walkers and cyclists who want to be first onto the hills, while those further into the White Peak around Bradfield and Tideswell sit in gentler, more sheltered farmland.

Weather on the moorland fringe can turn quickly even in summer, with driving rain and low cloud arriving with little warning, so a good waterproof and warm layers matter more here than at a typical lowland site, and pitches with some natural shelter from hedges or walls are worth seeking out. Wild camping is not generally legal in England without landowner permission, and this includes the Peak District, which lacks the Dartmoor-style access rights found in parts of Scotland and Devon, so campers should stick to licensed sites or seek explicit permission from farmers, several of whom run small campsites alongside their land specifically for this purpose.

May to September is the reliable camping season around Sheffield, with long evenings for walking after pitching up, though many of the smaller farm sites open only from Easter to October and close entirely over winter. Bank holiday weekends and the school summer holidays are the busiest periods, particularly at sites within easy reach of popular walking routes such as the Pennine Way and the Monsal Trail, so early booking is worthwhile from spring onwards. Early and late season visits bring quieter sites and lower prices, though nights can turn cold on exposed ground even in April and September.