Intrepid Explorers Celia Fiennes When Celia Fiennes toured the Peak on horseback in 1697, she was determined to see all the attractions of the day. This meant some difficult journeys as the only acceptable way for a lady to ride a horse was side-saddle. On her travels around England, Miss Fiennes had been thrown from her horse, fallen in cobbled streets and come face to face with a highwayman. Here in the Peak she was accompanied by only two servants but she did hire a guide. She was a confident horse-woman, except when neither she nor her horse dared to go down a very steep zig-zag path to the Peak Cavern. She found the roads of the High Peak difficult. It took her six hours to ride nine miles to Buxton, where she tried out the baths, which simply made her shiver. However, she was pleased with the ‘pretty, neate market town’ of Bakewell. Daniel Defoe Daniel Defoe, the 18th-century journalist and author of works including Robinson Crusoe, also toured the Peak on horseback. He too admired Bakewell but was unimpressed by Matlock, writing that he had reached the town by a ‘base, stoney, mountainous road’. In Defoe’s opinion, the Peak was ‘inhospitable’, ‘a howling wilderness’ and ‘the most desolate, wild and abandoned country in all England’. On the other hand: ‘however rugged the hills were, the vales were everywhere fruitful, well inhabited, the markets well supplied, and the provisions extraordinarily good; not forgetting the ale, which everywhere exceeded, if possible, what was passed, as if the farther north the better the liquor’. He also thought the Peak mining folk the greatest wonder of the Peak. John Byng In June 1790, John Byng, later Viscount Torrington, rode his horse from Bakewell to Cromford, a six-hour journey. At Bakewell, Byng was impressed by Arkwright’s cotton mill, critical of a tyrant school master and depressed by his overnight accommodation and the gloomy weather. After leaving Bakewell, he noted the pretty mill at Alport and the fine stone bridge over the river Lathkill. From here he was taken by a local guide to Robin Hood’s Stride and the Hermit’s Cave below Cratcliffe Rocks. Byng went on to explore Rowtor Rocks at Birchover and took an interest in the lead mines between Elton and Winster, finding Winster ‘a much better and gayer place than Bakewell’. He continued through Wensley and Darley to ‘the sweet scenery of Matlock vale beneath the high torr’ before stopping for refreshments at the Black Dog Inn in Cromford where he spent a thought –provoking weekend. Want to know more? The Torrington Diaries by John Byng, Eyre & Spottiswood, 1934 The Journals of Celia Fiennes edited by C. Morris. Cresset Press 1947 A Tour of the whole island of Great Britain by Daniel Defoe. 1724 Click here to search the books database More Pictures Famous People