Oxlow Cavern

Giant's Hole is a well-known cave near Castleton in Derbyshire, consisting mostly of large passages. It is a stream-way cave, and part of the Karst topography of the area.There is a complex system connecting the cave to Oxlow Cavern and Maskhill Mine to the south. The Entrance Series is easily accessible making it a favourite with novices and groups. The stream that flows into the entrance can be followed through the cave, bypassing three sumps, to the East Canal, Giant's Hole's terminal sump. There are several major tributary passages and a high-level fossil series that provides an alternative route through the cave and makes up part of the classic "round trip". East Canal has been dived to a depth of 24 metres (79 ft) in drought (but water levels are normally much higher). The connection to Oxlow Cavern is a "serious undertaking" and many cavers have underestimated the difficulty of the passage. Access is permissive, on payment of a fee at a parking area near Peakshill Farm. The cave is within the Castleton SSSI.Since 2002, the Derbyshire Cave Rescue Organisation has attended 11 callouts to Giant's Hole, one of which resulted in a fatality.

Mam Tor is a 517 m (1,696 ft) hill near Castleton in the High Peak of Derbyshire, England. Its name means "mother hill", so called because frequent landslips on its eastern face have resulted in a multitude of "mini-hills" beneath it. These landslips, which are caused by unstable lower layers of shale, also give the hill its alternative name of Shivering Mountain.In 1979, the continual battle to maintain the A625 road (Sheffield to Chapel en le Frith) on the crumbling eastern side of the hill was lost when the road officially closed as a through-route, with the Fox House to Castleton section of the road being re-designated as the A6187. The hill is crowned by a late Bronze Age and early Iron Age univallate hill fort, and two Bronze Age bowl barrows. At the base of the Tor and nearby are four show caves: Blue John Cavern, Speedwell Cavern, Peak Cavern and Treak Cliff Cavern where lead, Blue John, fluorspar and other minerals were once mined. Mam Tor was declared to be one of the Seven Wonders of the Peak by Thomas Hobbes in his 1636 book De Mirabilibus Pecci.Simon Jenkins rates the panorama from Kinder Scout to Stanage Edge as one of the top ten in England.

The Blue John Cavern is one of the four show caves in Castleton, Derbyshire, England. The others are Peak Cavern, Treak Cliff Cavern and Speedwell Cavern.

Winnats Pass (or Winnats, as shown on some Ordnance Survey maps) is a hill pass and limestone gorge in the Peak District of Derbyshire, England. The name is a corruption of 'wind gates' due to the swirling winds through the pass. It lies west of the village of Castleton, in the National Trust's High Peak Estate and the High Peak borough of Derbyshire. The road winds through a cleft, surrounded by high limestone ridges. At the foot of the pass is the entrance to Speedwell Cavern, a karst cave accessed through a flooded lead mine, and which is a popular tourist attraction.In the 1930s, Winnats Pass was the location used for annual access rallies in support of greater access to the moorlands or the Peak District, around the time of the Mass Trespass of Kinder Scout. At their peak these were attended by up to 10,000 people.The permanent closure of the main A625 road at Mam Tor in 1979 due to subsidence has resulted in Winnats Pass being heavily used by road traffic. However, the narrowness of the road and its maximum gradient of over 28% (1 in 3+1⁄2) has caused it to be closed to buses, coaches and vehicles over 7.5 tonnes in weight. The road regularly features in the Tour of the Peak cycle race each autumn.

Odin Mine is a disused lead mine in the Peak District National Park, situated at grid reference SK133835. It lies on a site of 25 hectares near the village of Castleton, England. It is the oldest documented mine in Derbyshire and is thought to be one of the oldest lead mines in England. The mine is a Scheduled Ancient Monument and has biological and geological significance within the Castleton Site of Special Scientific Interest.

Eldon Hill is a hill in the Peak District National Park in the county of Derbyshire, England, 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) southwest of the village of Castleton. It is a 470-metre (1,540 ft) limestone hill whose pastureland is used for rough grazing, although a large proportion has been lost to limestone quarrying. It lies within the Castleton Site of Special Scientific Interest. Eldon Hill was formed when a bed of pure limestone was squeezed and upfolded by geological forces to form a dome; it is the highest limestone hill north of the River Wye.The hill is of considerable geological, historical and industrial interest; it lies at the northern limit of the carboniferous limestone in the Peak District, as further north it merges into the millstone grit of the Dark Peak. The name Elveden is first attested in 1285 as Elvedon and seems to have meant 'Elves' hill'.Quarrying permission was granted in 1950 and huge quantities of limestone have been excavated, mostly for road-building purposes. A large amount of the northern and northwestern slopes of the hill have disappeared and it has been called the best-known eyesore in the Peak District. In 1995 an application by RMC Aggregates to extend the quarrying further east was denied as parliament tightened up on environmental problems caused by old mineral permissions granted between 1948 and 1981. The quarry closed in 1999 and now stands unused with vegetation starting to grow on the quarry face. There have been some attempts at natural restoration with several aquatic pools being established in the former workings. The termination of quarrying has also given cavers the chance to explore some of the narrow caves exposed by the work, with Sidetrack Cave (discovered 2002) being one of the most impressive. In September 2020 the quarry was used as a film location for a TV series called Ray James, inspired by H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds.350 metres south of the summit lies Eldon Hole. At 55 metres it is the deepest pothole in the area and was named as one of the Seven Wonders of the Peak by the philosopher Thomas Hobbes in 1636. According to folk tradition, it is the abode of the Devil. Close to the summit of the hill lies a Bronze Age tumulus, a large burial site measuring 16 by 15 metres and 1.5 metres high. The tumulus, a Scheduled Monument, has been excavated on several occasions with human skeletons and jewellery amongst the finds. The hill is dotted with numerous lead mines, all disused and many capped off for safety. Eldon Hill can be climbed either from the villages of Peak Forest to the south or Castleton to the north. The approach from Castleton goes up Cave Dale with a return down Winnats Pass to give a very interesting walk. The approach from Peak Forest is shorter and passes Eldon Hole on the way. The summit of the hill stands just 100 metres from the edge of the fenced quarry workings and gives good views with Mam Tor, Axe Edge Moor and the town of Buxton all well seen.

Treak Cliff Cavern is a show cave near Castleton in Derbyshire, England. It is part of the Castleton Site of Special Scientific Interest and one of only two sites where the ornamental mineral Blue John is still excavated (the other is the nearby Blue John Cavern). As part of an agreement with English Nature, the Blue John that can be seen in the show cave is not mined but it is extracted in small quantities from other areas of the cave and made into saleable items like bowls, jewellery, and ornaments.The cave comprises two sections, the Old Series, discovered by lead miners in the 18th century, and the New Series, discovered during blasting in the 1920s. Only the Old Series contains Blue John, but the New Series is well decorated with flowstone, stalagmites, and stalactites. Three human skeletons and flint implements from the Neolithic era were found in a small cave nearby in 1921.

Rushup Edge is a ridge in the Derbyshire Peak District of England. The ridge's highest point is Lord's Seat at 550 m (1,804 ft), while Mam Tor lies beyond its eastern end, at the western end of the Great Ridge. Lord's Seat is the site of a round barrow.

The Peak District is an upland area in England, at the southern end of the Pennines. Mostly in Derbyshire, it extends into Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Staffordshire, West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire. It is subdivided into the Dark Peak, moorland dominated by gritstone, and the White Peak, a limestone area with valleys and gorges. The Dark Peak forms an arc on the north, east and west of the district, and the White Peak covers central and southern areas. The highest point is Kinder Scout (2,087 ft (636 m)). Most of the area is within the Peak District National Park, a protected landscape designated in 1951.A 2021 report states that "the Park’s own population numbers around 40,000 and supports an estimated 18,000 jobs, predominantly through farming, manufacturing and, inevitably, tourism".The area has been inhabited since the Mesolithic era, and was largely agricultural until mining arose in the Middle Ages. During the Industrial Revolution several cotton mills were constructed in the area's valleys by Richard Arkwright. As mining declined, quarrying grew. Tourism came with the railways, spurred by the landscape, spa towns and Castleton's show caves.

Titan is a natural cavern near Castleton in the Derbyshire Peak District, and is the deepest shaft of any known cave in Britain, at 141.5 metres (464 ft). The existence of Titan was revealed in November 2006, following its discovery on 1 January 1999 after cavers discovered connections from the James Hall Over Engine Mine to both Speedwell Cavern and Peak Cavern. Previously, the deepest known underground shaft in Britain had been Gaping Gill on the slopes of Ingleborough in the Yorkshire Dales. A group of Peak District cavers discovered the shaft after finding an account by an 18th-century academic, James Plumtree, in a university library. Initial explorations in the James Hall Over Engine Mine led to the discovery of a large shaft named Leviathan, before further excavations revealed the existence of Titan.

Speedwell Cavern is one of the four show caves in Castleton, Derbyshire, England.The cave system consists of a horizontal lead miners' adit (a level passageway driven horizontally into the hillside) 200 metres (660 ft) below ground leading to the cavern itself, a limestone cave. The narrow adit is permanently flooded, so after descending a long staircase, access to the cave is made by boat. At the end of the adit, the cavern opens up with fluorspar veins, stalactites and stalagmites, and the so-called "Bottomless Pit". This chamber has an underground lake with a 20 metres (66 ft) high waterfall and an extremely deep vertical shaft, now choked to within 20 metres (66 ft) of the surface by rock spoil dumped by miners, after driving the continuation of the canal to the natural streamway beyond, which provided the bulk of the water for the canal. The original depth of the shaft has been estimated, from the amount of spoil placed in the shaft over the years, at around 150 metres (490 ft).The mine was developed in the 1770s but the limited lead ore deposits meant that it was not profitable and it was closed down by 1790.At the foot of Winnats Pass, it is a tourist attraction with an underground boat trip to the cavern. Originally the guide propelled the boat by pushing against the walls with his hands, later the boat was legged through, and now it is powered by an electric motor. A connection was discovered in 2006 between the Speedwell Cavern system and Titan, the largest natural shaft in the UK, which is 141.5 metres (464 ft) high.

Hollins Cross lies between Mam Tor and Lose Hill on the Great Ridge that separates Castleton and Edale in Derbyshire, England. Hollins Cross is the lowest point on the ridge and is therefore a popular route taken by walkers wishing either to cross from one side to the other, or to start a walk along the ridge. It was also the traditional route from Castleton to Edale. Coffins from Edale were taken over Hollins Cross to Hope church until a church was constructed in Edale, leading to the nickname of the "coffin road" for this route.There are three well-used paths on both sides of the ridge leading to Hollins Cross. The path west of Hollins Cross is a gentle climb on a paved path of around one kilometre to the summit of Mam Tor. The path east is slightly more taxing with the initial climb up Back Tor being unpaved and badly eroded. Beyond Back Tor the path continues on to Lose Hill on a paved surface. Hollins Cross is named for an actual cross that was raised here, but which had disappeared by 1905. A memorial to Tom Hyett (formerly surmounted by a topograph) was erected by the Long Eaton and District Group of the Ramblers Association in 1964.