The busy little stone-built market town of Bakewell on the River Wye is the largest settlement in the Peak District National Park and serves as its natural ‘capital’.
Its Monday market, now housed in the modern Agricultural Business Centre, has probably existed for over a thousand years, and it still serves as an important social meeting place for local farmers.
Find out the best things to do, pubs and hotels to visit, and where to sample the original Bakewell tart with our visitor's guide.
Things to do in Bakewell
Many travel into the town over the 13th-century Town Bridge over the Wye, the banks of which are popular with kids who love to feed the flocks of wildfowl. Towering over the town is the elegant spire of the Parish Church of All Saints, which features monuments to the Vernon and Manners families, ancestral Lords of the Manor from nearby Haddon Hall.
The late 17th-century Old Market Hall in the centre of town now serves as a National Park and Tourist Information Centre, but reputedly the oldest house is Bakewell is the Tudor Old House Museum with its excellent exhibition of items from the town’s past.
- Peak District guide: things to do and places to stay
- Yorkshire Dales guide: things to do and best walks
Bakewell tart
You can taste an original Bakewell pudding (or tart) at the place which claims, among others, to hold the original recipe in the Old Original Bakewell Pudding Shop.
Bakewell walks
Join the Monsal Trail – formerly the Midland Line but now a traffic-free, walking and riding route – at the former Bakewell Station for an easy, four-mile walk to one of the Peak’s most famous viewpoints at Monsal Head.
