Up hill and down dale, effortlessly

THE LAST thing you would expect in the Peak District is to cycle for mile after mile on the flat, with rocky outcrops above and deep valleys below. But you can - thanks to the ingenuity of last century's rail engineers and, more recently, the Peak National Park Authority, which has turned their endeavours into this most surprising of cycle ways. The High Peak trail cuts through the Peaks from the Derwent Valley to just east of Buxton. After a calf-aching climb up from Cromford station (well, with the words "high" and "peak" in the name, what do you expect?), I joined it at Middleton Top and headed west.

As with so many cycle routes away from the roads, I was immediately struck by the silence. Just the wind whirring through the wheels and rustling the grasses, sheep's bleats rising from the fields below, the odd harsh caw of the crows. Actually, that wasn't quite all. Sporadic crumps and rumbles reverberated over the fields, as if an artillery battery had opened up. After a while I realised they came from one of the huge quarries providing aggregate for noisier, less evolved transport - like motorways.

Apart from these scars, the land rose and fell in deep folds of green pasture, with patches of woodland - beech, ash, hazel - and hills sprouting a topknot of Scots pines. And everywhere, running up slopes and over ridges, were the drystone walls.

This is a landscape that wears its past on its sleeve. At Daisy Bank, the line runs past an old halt where cart horses were loaded on to wagons in the first stage of their journey to the mud, blood and chaos of the Flanders trenches. Alongside, lines of old lead workings - known locally as "rakes"- reared up in humps like some prehistoric earthwork. In places, the fields were scattered with industrial relics, rusting iron or tumbled stone, often so far gone that I couldn't begin to guess what their original function was. They might as well have been lost fragments of old temples, instead of fragments of a lost economy.

Most had sprung up in the wake of the railway. Opened in 1830, this was one of the first in England. It was intended to be a canal, but the lack of local water, and the hassle of raising it through such terrain, forced a change of plan. For years, though, the halts were known as "wharves" rather than stations. At first the loads were hauled by horses, with fixed winding engines for the steeper inclines. Then steam took over, bringing in coal and taking out limestone and wool. But the steep stretches were few and far between. For the most part, the engineers' triumph was reflected in the gradient signs by the side of the trail: 1 in 100; 1 in 300, so slight as to be imperceptible. At least to the untrained eye, that is. At one road crossing, I held the gate open for a man walking his dog. "Which way you going, then," he asked me, "up or down?" I looked left and right, but could see only a trail so flat it might have been laid with a spirit level. So I pointed: "That way." "Ah, you'll be all right then, downhill." Deciding he was two sheep short of a flock, I pedalled off, but soon realised my feet were going round a shade faster than before. He was right.

It was a strange feeling, this level ride among high hills. It almost felt like cheating - a sort of armchair cycling, sitting back and watching the landscape unfurl. A folded green patchwork with stone walls as its seams, liberally sprinkled with the white splodges of sheep and two-tone Friesians. In some sections, the railway itself was a thing of some beauty. In one long sweep, the line swung majestically round the shoulders of a hillside, held in by high, curving limestone walls, then glided clean over a valley across the crest of a towering embankment. Eighty feet below, a farmer puttered around on one of those tiny tractors that look more like lawnmowers, rounding up sheep the lazy way.

At Parsley Hay, the trails converged. The High Peak carried on towards Buxton, but I turned south on another ghost railway - now the Tissington Trail, running downhill (yeah!) from the plateau to the edge of the Dove Valley. It swept through cuttings splashed with soft blue harebells and the egg-yolky toadflax, and with rowan trees bursting with a bumper crop of bright red berries - a supposed sign of a hard winter to come.

Around Hartington, the trail dipped down right to the valley floor, drystone walls zig-zagging across the meadows. Then it was up into the folded hills again, past Tissington village and Hunger Hill - aptly named, since by now the silence was also broken by some ferocious rumblings from my stomach.

Behind me, thick banks of cloud were gathering on a freshening north- east wind, edging out the sun. The effect was spectacular. Shooting out from the edge of the cloud, the low rays seemed to pick out details in the landscape - a barn, some beech trees, half a field - and hold them as though spotlit against the steel-grey sky. Then the sun was swallowed up, and for a while I thought I'd be soaked as well as starving. But the wind held, the clouds sailed over into Staffordshire (which no doubt deserved them), and I freewheeled down into Ashbourne - and supper.

CYCLING THE HIGH PEAK TRAIL

Leaflets on the two trails mentioned are available from the Peak National Park Authority (01629 816200). Cycles can be hired at either end of the trails. Full details are available from the Park Authority. Both trails are clearly marked on the local OS map: "Landranger 119 - Buxton, Matlock and Dove Dale area".

Derby and Chesterfield are the nearest mainline stations; to get close to the start of the High Peak trail, take the local train from Derby to Matlock and get off at Cromford or the wonderfully named Whatstandwell. A line also passes through Buxton. Bicycles can usually be carried free on local services, and for a pounds 3 supplement (booked in advance) on mainline ones. But there are exceptions, so telephone your local booking office to check.

Stretches of the High Peak trail are remote. Take some snacks to ward off hunger pangs, and something to drink (a few pounds will buy a water bottle and holder which clips to the bike). !