Anna Paxton talks to John D. Burns about her new guide to bagging all 121 peaks in England’s Peak District.

Anna Paxton

In Peak Bagging Peak District, local author Anna Paxton guides you to 121 of the most rewarding summits in the national park, including the 74 accessible Ethels plus 47 other notable tops. Whether you’re a hillwalker or trail runner, this is the definitive guide to bagging the best of the Peak.

Climb the finest hills in the Peak District – and discover the very best routes to do it.

In Peak Bagging Peak District, local author Anna Paxton guides you to 121 of the most rewarding summits in the national park, including the 74 accessible Ethels plus 47 other notable tops. Whether you’re a hillwalker or trail runner, this is the definitive guide to bagging the best of the Peak.

Taking inspiration from the UK’s bestselling Peak Bagging Wainwrights and Peak Bagging Munros Volume 1, this book blends challenging hill lists with thoughtfully designed routes – each chosen to be an outstanding walk or run in its own right.

Explore dramatic edges and moorland plateaus, rugged ridgelines and peaceful valleys. Hike classic circuits like Mam Tor and Lose Hill, scale the Dragon’s Back on Chrome Hill and Parkhouse Hill, and roam Kinder Scout’s wild uplands via the Pennine Way.

The 32 routes are grouped into five regions, covering the diverse landscapes of the Dark Peak and White Peak. Each route includes 1:40,000-scale maps 

Anna Paxton is a hillwalker and ultrarunner who has completed ultramarathons in the Alps and the USA as well as closer to home. She works as a freelance writer and film producer on a variety of outdoor-related projects. Born in Sheffield and now living just a short walk or run from the gritstone edges of Froggatt and Stanage, she is especially knowledgeable about the Peak District. Her first guidebook, Day Walks in East Anglia, was published in 2021; this was followed by Day Walks in Lincolnshire in 2025. Peak Bagging Peak District is her latest book. @anna_paxton_

Read a transcript of the interview.

Audio file

Transcript

John

Hello, welcome to Outdoors in Scotland. I’m John Burns, and this is my wee podcast for people who like the outdoors in Scotland and anywhere else for that matter. Many years ago, I lived in Sheffield before I moved to Scotland. And I loved walking in the Peak District, that really wild, remote, rolling hills with great gritstone edges where you can learn to climb and the great places for losing the skin off the back of your hands most from my experience you know but it’s a fascinating and it’s you know it It’s a wonderful place to explore if you’ve not been there before. Now, my guest today is Anna Paxton, and she’s written a really great little guide for those of you who feel the compulsion of the disease to bag peaks. It’s called Peak Bagging in the Peak District. And I brought her on to talk about her love for that area, what a wonderful area it is, and to introduce you to her book and the sort of trails it opens up to you. So, hello Anna, how are you?

Anna

Hi John, I’m really good, nice to talk to you.

John

Brilliant, brilliant. Can I ask you, for folk who’ve not been to the Peak District, I know it’s a wonderful area, but tell us a bit about it, what is it that fascinates you about the Peak District?

Anna

Well, if you’ve never been to the Peak District, it’s actually the nation’s first national park, so that makes it really special. It’s actually a very, very diverse area. It’s quite accessible because it’s surrounded by cities like Manchester and Sheffield. But once you get into the Peak District itself, you’ve got these, like you said a little bit earlier, these high, wild moorlands in the dark peak and your gritstone edges. But then in the south of the Peak District, You’ve got this real contrast of these lush green fields and rolling valleys in the White Peak. And there’s just, there’s so much to explore. I don’t think you could explore every inch of it in your whole life.

John

One of the things that struck me about it was, as you said, it’s very accessible. If you’re someone who relies on public transport, it’s a great place to go. I remember getting a train out to EDL once in a blizzard, because all the roads were blocked, but you could still get there. So is public transport really quite accessible, do you think?

Anna

It is, and actually there’s routes in the book that you can most definitely do if you’re coming by train, or if you’re coming by bus, but yeah, you’ve got those train routes in from Manchester and Sheffield, so you can easily get to places like Hathersidge, Grindleford, which is where I live, or there’s places on the other side of the Peak District, Chinley, that are closer to Manchester, and there’s great walks you can do around there.

John

All right, okay, now the routes are divided into, that you’ve described, are divided into three areas. There’s the dark peak, the white peak and the southwest peak. How are those areas differentiate then?

Anna

I’d say initially it’s the geology that makes the difference. So in the north and in the dark peak, The darkness is these grit stone edges that they can kind of look red, you know, it’s a kind of a sandstone. And so you’ve got these big stone edges. And I know they’re not talking about the color of the landscape when they say the dark peak, because I think it does refer to the rock, but you’ve also got these high moorlands. in the winter when the bracken dies down and it’s this beautiful golden brown, so that’s what I think of as the dark peak. And then the white peak is actually limestone, so you’ve got this completely different rock, you know, the land has eroded away around it and left these beautiful outcrops of rock and these incredible valleys.

John

Yeah, I think when I think of the Peak District, this is undermining it in a way. I think of the peat bogs. It’s an area, it’s essentially rolling moorland with sort of these really quite spectacular jagged edges here and there. Is that kind of fur description, do you think?

Anna

Yeah, of the north, especially like the wild, dark peak in the north, you know, you can do these routes where in the beginning, you’re, you’re climbing, you know, trudging through a bog, going up a hill, whatever it is you do. But once you reach the summit, it is these kind of wild, really open plateaus. And that’s where you’re going out and you’re bagging these various trigs or ethols. you could stay up there you know there’s wild moorland birds whatever weather comes you can’t avoid it and they’re just such beautiful kind of wild areas yeah.

John

Yeah they are you can’t you definitely can’t avoid the weather you’ve mentioned you’ve mentioned a terrible word bagging bagging aethels now that’s something that I deny at every opportunity but tell me what exactly is an aethel then?

Anna

Okay, well, ethyls are a number of summits that were actually only designated fairly recently. So I think it was back in 2021. So that might be why you haven’t heard of them.

John

As recently as that? Okay, okay. So do you know the definition of an ethyl? Here we get into very deep, deep, dark waters, I would think.

Anna

Yeah, I think he would need to talk to the guy who designated these Ethels, but there was the reason behind it. So it’s called Ethel because they’re named after Ethel Haythornthwaite. And Ethel Haythornthwaite was a woman from Sheffield who was really instrumental in the designation of the Peak District as the nation’s first national park.

John

Ethel Haythornthwaite, is that it?

Anna

Ethel Haythornthwaite, yeah.

John

So, really, if there was, if she doesn’t come from Yorkshire, then they don’t make tea in shiny, you know what I mean?

Anna

That’s right. She was from Sheffield. And so she was out there, you know, campaigning long, long ahead of her time, really, to protect that green belt area around Sheffield, which she successfully did. And she was instrumental in the foundation of the Longshore estate, which is just up the hill above me. And so these hills were named after her really to get her name out there. And it’s worked because people are going out there trying to bank these hills.

John

Yeah, yeah, and we’re getting out of there. I mean, in terms of the history of the outdoor movement, I didn’t realise that the Peak District was the first national park.

Anna

Yeah, yeah, it was. And it wouldn’t really have happened if it wasn’t like people like Ethel. So I understand she was a member of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England, and so they were the people behind trying to make sure that urbanisation and industrialisation didn’t spread so far that these wild natural areas didn’t get consumed by it.

John

Didn’t get swallowed up, which could very easily have happened, isn’t it, really? And also, obviously, you know, Kinder Scout has got its iconic statuses where the Kinder Trespass took place, which was really the 1930s, wasn’t it, which was in a way the great battle between working class folk and the aristocracy, trying to establish our right to roam. So it’s a really important place in the history of the outdoors, isn’t it?

Anna

It was, and we never forget that. And we’re so lucky that we can go out there into these areas of Proland, and we have the right to roam across them and to access them. There’s so many places across the country where people don’t have that right to explore. So it’s great that we’re able to, and that means we can put these routes together and go out there and find and discover what’s out there, really.

John

And in order to do these routes, what kind of time do you need? Are they great big long routes or are they sort of things that you can do in a day?

Anna

Yeah, they’re routes that you can do in the day. Some of them are quite long and quite strenuous. If you’re casually hiking, you want to allow yourself maybe eight hours. But I’m a trail runner and I think these are actually really, really good routes for trail runners because quite often people want to have a day out with a good amount of ascent, amazing views, a bit of the challenge and trail runners could probably do them in three to four hours depending how hard they’re pushing.

John

Yeah you’re fit that’s cheating you know. You’re not supposed to be fit. Tell us if you had to choose maybe a couple of routes that are your favourite, describe a couple of them to us, I’d be really interested to hear about them.

Anna

Yeah. Oh, that’s a really hard question because honestly, I do love everywhere in the Peak District, but I’m not going to pick the obvious ones. You know, there’s a lot like Stannage, maybe Derwent that people will be able to find for themselves. So I’m going to say there’s a really lovely route in the White Peak called Tideswell. The route’s called Tideswell in the book. And it does go to very well-known places like this, a viaduct called Monsal Head, where you get a really incredible view. But because they’re longer routes, you get the opportunity to really explore and find some quieter places. So the route goes through a village called Lytton. which has a really lovely pub, actually, if you’ve got time to stop there. And then it goes down into a beautiful, beautiful dale called Tansley Dale. It’s full of birds. It’s very quiet. And then you’ve got a steep climb to a trig at the top in a little nature reserve. And that trig is Wardlow Haycock. It’s also an Ethel. And I just love it. It’s super beautiful. Quite often it’s quiet and you won’t see anyone else there, but lots of nature and lots of birds.

John

What’s the hill called it? Wardlow Haycop.

Anna

Wardlow Haycop.

John

COP.

Anna

COP.

John

Oh yeah, I know what cop. Oh right, okay. I mean, I think one of the things I really like about the Peak District is you kind of get a sense of the relationship of people to the landscape really strongly because as you said there are really lovely little villages that sort of sit in the wrinkles of the landscape really and it’s as if it’s been as if and then look They’re kind of organic, if that makes sense. They’re kind of made of local stone and they sort of wriggle around the contours of the landscape. Did you get a sense of that as well?

Anna

Yeah, I really did notice actually, walking these routes, how it would be hard to find a part of the Peak District that hasn’t at some point been affected and been changed by people. So even on the high moorlands, you’ve had the effect of industrialization and acid rain. So we’ve got these big brown kind of… I think they’re called, but recently they’ve been rewilded and sphagnum’s been planted and, you know, they’re now really lush and beautiful. But all of that is a kind of a human influence process. But the same in those beautiful villages. You know, you’ve got your dry stone walls wiggling around, lots of sheep. And yeah, you can’t go anywhere where humans haven’t touched it really, even though it feels very natural and beautiful.

John

Yeah, I mean, it’s you mentioned a very important thing that there are some. some fantastic little pubs hidden away here and there that yeah the best way to find them is to stumble over really or even stumble out of them.

Anna

I’m going to say you don’t need to stumble on them because I’ve listed them in the book.

John

Oh my god I have to get a copy of this.

Anna

I can’t recommend one if I haven’t tested it can I so you know if it’s in there it means it’s probably good local beer there’ll be cafes that do nice coffee all that kind of thing.

John

I mean the sacrifices you’ve made in writing this book I mean it’s it’s it’s unbelievable really isn’t.

Anna

It it’s a very hard life.

John

It must be you’re going on great walks winding up and sampling local local ale in diff in really nice pubs I don’t know you’ve managed it really and now and each now each route has got um no no I’m getting on a bit now I do know a little bit about these things but but you’ve got downloadable GPX files tell me about a GPX file how does that work?

Anna

Yeah, OK. I’ve been working for quite a long time as well, so I didn’t use to use these kind of things. I did use to navigate in the traditional way with your map and your compass. You always start by saying everybody should know how to use them and should take them just in case anything goes wrong on the way. But these days, you don’t need to rely on them as your first source of information. So these GPX files, you can download them and then use them in an app so the app will show you a map of where you’re going, where you are on that map, and tell you the way so that you can follow that route with a little bit of guidance.

John

Right, that sounds really good. Yeah, yeah, well, my eyesight is such these days that I’m finding, especially when it’s at night, unfortunately, I’ve been forced to take up the electronic agent, so I might even manage to use one of those myself, you know?

Anna

If you get yourself a sports watch, you can load them into your sports watch and the arrow will tell you. And in case of disaster, you can do all kinds of things like retrace your steps. It can give you your GPS, sorry, your OS coordinates. So if in the absolute worst case, you need to call Mountain Rescue, you’ve got that basic information, you can tell them where you are.

John

Absolutely. Oh, no, I think, as you say, in crisis situations, you can’t beat these things at all. And one of the things I can remember from my days of walking there, you talked about the weather and you talked about, obviously, it can be pretty wild at times because it’s a fairly open area. But usually, there’s quite often quite a lot of escape routes if you need them from these, unlike Scotland, there are quite a lot of easy ways ways off if things go wrong. Is that your experience?

Anna

Yeah, it is. So the vast majority of the routes are not so committing. And what we’ve done, I say we use me and the publisher, because after I send the route, you know, they design it and lay it out nicely in the book. So where there’s an option to make a route shorter or a potential escape route, we’ve included them in there and, you know, some of them may be 20 kilometres long or a little bit more, but you can split them into two halves of 10 or 12k and that makes them nicely manageable.

John

Yeah, I mean, I think that’s a really important point, particularly for folk, you know, if they’re not particularly experienced or perhaps too confident in what they can do, you can say to them, well, if you get this far, you can go off that way or go off that way. It gives people options that allows them to sort of tailor the route to their own abilities and to the weather conditions at the time. I think that’s a really important thing, you know?

Anna

And there’s There’s nothing wrong with deciding you’re a bit tired and you’ve had enough for the day and you’re ready to come back down. That’s all right.

John

Yeah, it’s a free country, I would say. You don’t have to get to the top.

Anna

We don’t need to beat ourselves up with these challenges, do we? It’s nice to have a tick list and it gives you an idea of where to go and what to do, but it’s still all for fun at the end of the day.

John

That’s right. I have to say, I haven’t beat myself up with a challenge for quite some time. Tell us, talking about challenges, I’m really quite interested to hear yeah tell us a little bit about the longest route in the book which is the Great Ridge tell us about that.

Anna

Oh okay well a lot of people will be familiar with part of this route because the Great Ridge is the one above Castleton that goes from Mantor to Loose Hill and I think it’s one of the country’s most popular and well-walked routes really but that section of it?

John

Is Mantor is that an old Iron Age fort am I right in thinking or or have I made the art?

Anna

I don’t know the facts of that Higgator is an old, no car walk by Higgator is an old Iron Age hillfall.

John

Oh right maybe I’m confusing it with that okay go on sorry I’m interrupting.

Anna

Well I’m sure I think there is archaeology on Mamtor but I don’t know the story of it.

John

Right okay so it starts there and where does it go from there?

Anna

Yeah, so this one, because I knew that people would probably be able to find their way onto the ridge from Castleton anyway, rather than doing that short loop, I’ve made quite a long loop that goes further to the south. And so you go through quite a quiet area called Perrydale, and then you’ll come up to the far end of an area called Russia Pedge, which means that, you know, you walk this much longer ridge and it gives you this big reveal of Mam Tor and the ridge going on beyond it.

John

Right, I mean that sounds a great, presumably you can shorten that if you want to, you don’t have to do the whole thing presumably, but yeah I mean one of the great characteristics of the area is the edges which where as I say an awful lot of people including myself learned to climb, you know, but one of the things those ridges do do, all those edges, they sort of, they give you a great viewpoints and great places to look out across the landscape, is that what you’ve experienced?

Anna

Yeah, yeah, definitely. So although the book visits, the Ethels that you can visit that aren’t on private land, that’s not the only peaks in the peakbagging book. So the rest of them are just really beautiful viewpoints, places that are interesting to go and see. But I mean, they are in the main high up. So when you get there, you’d actually get a fantastic view.

John

I mean, it kind of sells the Peak District in a way. You’ve got 32 routes, I think, and 121 Peak District peaks and eccles, which is pretty much enough for everybody, I would have thought, really, you know. I think so, yeah. Do you think it’s a great… It sounds to me that what you’ve done is you’ve created something which I think, well, for the… So the really experienced people is going to be a really useful guide, but it’s also a great guide, I suppose, for wanting to get into the peak district or wanting to explore it. Is that fair? Is that right, you think?

Anna

Yeah, I hope so. I mean, the book itself is more of a coffee table book. It’s quite large. It’s not one that you put in your pocket and take with you on the walk because as you’ve said, you’ve got those GPX files or however you want to navigate.

John

Okay, okay. Right, that’s really good. Yeah, yeah. So that’s, I see, I understand what this is now. So you read the book and you get inspired and you download the GPX files and then you’ve got to do the hard work. That’s it.

Anna

So I really I tried when I was out there walking these routes to get the best photos that I possibly could so you know tried to go there at sunset or you know went out there on the days that looked especially pretty and I think even if you don’t feel like doing the walks you can flick through the book you can look at it and enjoy the pictures and then think about the places you might go another time.

John

Yeah yeah I think as an area it’s a unique area really. It’s well worth exploring. I think, I suppose one of the things that I found about it was, is that it’s full of surprises. You’re walking along and you suddenly come to a view or a feature that you weren’t expecting or like a kind of an unusual weathered rock feature that you didn’t know was there. And so it’s got an enormous variety as an area. That’s kind of what I felt about it. Have you sort of felt that too?

Anna

Yeah, it’s got enormous variety and it’s atmospheric, you know, it doesn’t matter if it’s a hazy day, even if it’s raining, if it’s sunny, it’s always going to look stunning.

John

I think that’s a good point. It is a very atmospheric area, that’s right. I mean, it’s mists are not unknown, are they? No. But I think it kind of comes alive in that kind of weather, if that makes any sense at all, from my experience of it. I definitely think so, yeah. Yeah, it’s like in another world sometimes, does that make sense? You know, you’re walking along and the heather is like, starred with dew and the air is almost like saturated with water and yet you always know that if you drop down even a few couple of 100 feet maybe you’ll be in a different world again. I don’t know if you’ve experienced that.

Anna

I have and I love that feeling when you’re in the mist and say perhaps your path is flagstones through the moor and you see it wiggle ahead in front of you and it’s just rolling out as you go. It’s so nice.

John

Yeah. I think it’s fair to say that as an area, the Peak District has probably got something for everybody. Would you agree with that?

Anna

Yeah, 100%. So if you want to go to a cute little village, a rural town, if you want to go to a local pub, you can do that and you could do a nice walk from them, or you can go and seek the wildest, most remote places. It’s got everything.

John

Well, that’s right. I mean, obviously, we’ve got to thank you for the huge sacrifice you made in producing this book. But also, I’m interested to know what’s next for Anna Paxton then? Have you got any other things lined up that you want to write?

Anna

That’s a really good question. So when you write guidebooks, ’cause this is the third one that I’ve written, and guidebooks, they fit into a template, you know, so there’s creativity in the routes and, you know, I know what I hope people get from going and walking those routes and exploring them, but I’d be interested to explore a bit more writing that’s got my own thoughts and ideas and not necessarily fits in the template like that.

John

All right. You want to stay clear. I write books like that. You want to stay clear of them, really. Brilliant. OK, listen, it’s been great to talk to you. And your book comes out, I believe, on the 18th of September this year. It’s 2025, as we record this. Is that right? Have I got that right?

Anna

That’s right. So as we speak, it’s out for pre-order. And very shortly on the 18th of September, it’s going to be available for everybody.

John

Oh great, you have to have a pint in one of these Peak District pubs when that comes out, you know.

Anna

One or two of them, yeah.

John

If not several. Listen Anna, it’s been lovely talking to you, and I think it sounds a great book for everyone really, and it is a lovely area, a fantastic place to explore, which is on a lot of people’s doorstep really. So I think that’s, I’m sure a lot of people enjoy reading your book, and thanks very much for talking to me.

Anna

So much. I really hope they enjoy it too.

John

Bye bye.

Anna

Bye.