Buxton museum has an excellent display on the history of the Peak district as well as an Art Gallery and the Boyd Dawkins collections. The museum is situated in the former Peak Hotel and almost opposite to the town hall in Higher Buxton. Even though it's small, it's well worth visiting. In the upstairs of the museum the Peak District displays which illustrates how the landscape of the Peak District developed and the animals and people who lived here in ancient times.

The museum won the 'Museum of the Year' award in 1990. The upstairs is also an art gallery used for regular exhibitions of work by local artists while downstairs there are a range of important geological and historical finds but displayed in the familiar musty cases of traditional museums. The museum can be reached by car, bus and train. It will remain open for the entire year.

Tel: 01298 24658

Middleton top is the last surviving winding engine from the out of use Cromford and High Peak Railway near Middleton by Wirksworth in Derbyshire. This railway is now converted in to a cycle way known as the High Peak Trail. The engine was used to wind trucks up and down the Middleton incline that has a gradient of 1 in 8 and is a beam engine that was built by the Butterley Company in 1829. These are the original engines of the railway began operation in 1830.

The incline was in use until 1963. There is a pulley wheel outside the engine house under a grille in the center of the track. At the bottom of the incline there was similar pulleys and loop of steel cable attached around them. The wagons are attached to the pulleys by chains and the normally the engine would have only one set of wagons descending the incline and another on the ascending track in order to counter balance the load. There is a sample wagon from the old railway outside the engine house a and a short section of the original track with a distinctive type of rail. >

Tel: 08456 058 058