Matlock Bath

Matlock Bath is a strange, wonderful little contradiction of a place, and I mean that as a compliment. You come around a bend in the Derwent Gorge expecting more of the same green Peak District hills, and suddenly there’s an amusement arcade, a chip shop, a strip of ice cream parlors, and a genuine cable car climbing the cliffside above you. It was a Victorian spa town once, people came to take the waters, and you can still feel that faded seaside-resort energy even though the nearest actual sea is a couple hours away.

The cable car is the reason most people stop, and it’s worth it. It hauls you up to the Heights of Abraham, a wooded hilltop with two show caverns you can tour underground and a viewing platform that lays the whole gorge out below you — the river, the rooftops, the wooded slopes on the far side. I’m not usually one for cable cars, something about dangling always makes me a little tense, but the views won me over about halfway up. Lia, who is far braver than me about heights, spent the whole ride leaning out taking photos while I gripped the bar.

Down at ground level, the main promenade is where the old spa-town character really shows. There’s a petrifying well where objects left under the mineral-rich dripping water slowly turn to stone — teddy bears, hats, an old top hat that’s been there for years — which sounds gimmicky and absolutely is, but I still bought a postcard from the gift shop next to it. On weekends in summer, classic car and motorbike owners cruise the strip and park up along the river, an unofficial tradition that apparently goes back decades, and the whole town takes on this low-key, unbothered festival mood.

We ate fish and chips on a bench by the river and watched the illuminations get tested for the autumn light show they run here every year, strings of colored bulbs strung along the water that draw crowds from well outside the county. It’s not subtle, and if you came to the Peak District purely for solitude and gritstone edges, Matlock Bath might feel like a jolt. But taken on its own terms, as a slightly kitsch, slightly melancholic old resort wedged into a limestone gorge, it charmed both of us more than we expected.

When to go: Visit on a summer weekend for the biker and classic-car promenade, or come in September/October for the illuminations — check ahead, as the cable car closes in high wind and over winter.