Ashbourne Heights

The amount of antics available at Alton Towers near Ashbourne might turn the grownups grey among the thrill rides, river rapids and other heady highlights of the country’s biggest theme park.

If you have younger sorts along, a less adrenaline-based but not less quiet time is available at the ‘Young Fun’ part of the park, which had CBeebies Land new for 2014 among various other totworthy fun. Alton Towers’s separate water park also has areas for the very small, along with hundreds of water features, lifeguard training and – bliss – a treatment room for the big people.

You’ll ensure Very Good Behaviour Indeed if you then take the family on to Gulliver’s Kingdom at Matlock Bath, a family theme park for ages two to 13 and designed to keep all ages busy/tired out for later (beware the nerf guns). If the offspring are still swinging about with excessive energy, Go Ape! at Buxton Country Park might let off suitable steam, or you could try knocking them out at award-winning Conkers in the National Forest.

Other energetic Peak District pastimes include watersports, laser tag, climbing, caving and zipwiring; find out where’s what at Ashbourne’s tourist information centre, which is practised in all things Peak.

Cyclists can pedal off along the Tissington and Manifold Trails, both mostly flat, and for walkers there are hundreds of miles’ worth of paths to pick from, such as the 46-mile Limestone Way, the 55-mile Derwent Valley Heritage Way or parts of the Pennine Way.

More peacefully, the Peak District has a high amount of culture and heritage to explore: National Trust houses and estates, the old spa towns of Matlock and Buxton, museums of all sorts, prehistoric cave paintings, three vintage railways and aeons more. Lead mining was a main industry here from Roman times until recently and info on the industry can be mined at Matlock’s Mining Museum.

Also recommended is Haddon Hall, a medieval manor house at Bakewell, used in reels of film sets from Jane Eyre (thrice) to The Princess Bride, and described as ‘the most perfect house to survive from the middle ages’.

Bolsover Castle, founded in the twelfth century, has regular events to tempt the kids, such as Cavalier horsemanship displays (the seventeenth century sort), exhibitions on torture for the gruesomely minded, a new outdoor play area, indoor riding school and a theatrical room just for little darlings.