On my third morning in Derbyshire, as a heavenly winter sun washed the verdant slopes and tidy stone villages, I came face to face with the Devil’s Arse.

Don’t fret, madam. Closer inspection revealed the vast breach in an intimidating limestone cliff, christened by 17th-century peasants who believed it to be the entrance to hell, as more divine photo opportunity than satanic buttock — yet another show-stopper on a hike embracing dramatic valleys, stately piles and muscular rivers.

Beelzebub’s ample posterior sits in the heart of the Peak District, the latest English region to be charted by the rambling scribe Mark Reid, a sort of Wainwright with booze. His guides fuse local history, geography and geology with crystal-clear navigation. But for the enthusiastic stroller, their tastiest ingredient may well be the top-notch country inns serving fruity local ale and gargantuan breakfasts.

I joined him for the final steps of research that has covered more than 600 miles and 60 pubs. I could work with this man.

There are craggy, furiously wild corners in the Peak District, but our gentle start nursed the green, rounded hills of the Chatsworth estate. From the huddled stone houses of Beeley, we pushed up through Smelting Mill Wood, where dense foliage concealed the 12ft-thick walls of an old quarry, the epic remnants of the area’s lead industry.

With a long day ahead, regular rehydration is critical, and within an hour we had swapped aristocrats — we were now on the Duke of Rutland’s, rather than Devonshire’s, manor — and ordered our first snifter. The Peacock, at Rowsley, is a solid 17th-century yeoman’s house sporting mullioned windows, a roaring fire and, with pints of Peak Ale at £3.25, West End prices. Reid, a bluff Yorkshireman who knows his beer, almost fainted with shock. I would have ordered pork scratchings, but I’d forgotten my credit card.

IN THIS part of the world, epic views require little effort. A gentle climb and the rivers Derwent and Wye lay far below, bisected by Stanton Moor, home to more than 70 Bronze Age burial sites and the Nine Ladies stone circle. The monoliths are reputed to be women turned into rock for dancing on the Sabbath — the trivialisation of our ancestral worship, and a possible solution for Girls Aloud.

It was silent, soulful walking without a human in sight, interrupted sporadically by startled pheasants exploding out of the undergrowth and Reid muttering into his tape recorder about distances and ale prices. Perhaps that explains why Bakewell was such a shock.

The Duke of Rutland may have failed to make it rival Buxton as a spa resort — its natural springs are colder — but it still pulls in the crowds. Traffic clogged the 13th-century bridge and coachloads of day-trippers overfed the ducks on the Wye as if preparing a Derbyshire version of foie gras.

I plumped for a different local speciality at the Old Original Bakewell Pudding Shop. The strangely addictive mix of pastry, jam, eggs, almonds, sugar and butter wouldn’t be popular on the catwalks of Milan, but then nor would the physique of the average Bakewell tourist.

But appearances be damned. Hiking is the perfect excuse for guilt-free calories: “Weight Watchers with mud,” according to Reid. After washing down the dieter’s nemesis with a pint at the Castle Inn, we rocketed out of town across the local golf course. And immediately ground to a halt. Ramblers must strike a large bell as a warning that aliens in bright waterproof trousers are about to invade the fairways. It can really ruin a good walk to have “Titleist Golf Balls” imprinted on your forehead.

Twenty minutes later, it was hard to credit the congestion we’d witnessed back in Bakewell. The Peak District may be ringed by Sheffield, Derby, Nottingham, Birmingham and Greater Manchester — a third of the UK’s population lives within an hour’s journey of the national park — yet outside the tourist honeypots, we hardly saw a soul.

The non-walkers don’t know what they’re missing. After forests and upland pastures, there were hints of something special ahead. Walls reared up, keeping deer in rather than ramblers out. And clambering up and over, there it was: the honeyed Palladian facade of Chatsworth House, ignited by spotlights in the late-afternoon murk.

Arriving in boots and Gore-Tex will never have the cachet of Mr Darcy in waistcoat and tight breeches — get yourself an anorak, man — but striding through the Capability Brown landscape that starred in Pride and Prejudice still stirred aristocratic pretensions.

Our target was the church in the estate village of Edensor, or rather its graveyard, resting place for Kathleen, widow of the Marquis of Hartington.

A nearby stone commemorates the visit to the grave by her brother, JFK, in 1963, less than five months before his assassination. As the wind whipped rain across my face, it was hard to imagine the iconic, glamorous president in such a remote corner of rural England.

Spirits revived with a vigorous dusk tramp along the River Derwent back to Beeley, the end of our 10-mile circular walk. The Devonshire Arms, a former haunt of Dickens and Edward VII, may have a historic stone exterior, but it conceals a recent makeover worthy of Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen.

Both the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire had a hand in the revamp, adding bright contemporary decor and Emma Tennant artworks in the rooms, along with flatscreen TVs and Neal’s Yard cosmetics. An incongruously funky brasserie serves modern fusion cuisine, including a gourmet fried breakfast topped with tempura sage. Call it what you will — boutique rambling, hip hiking — but after a day in the mud, it was rather wonderful and rather odd.

AS WELL AS a potpourri of pubs, Reid’s new guide celebrates the region’s unique geology: a central limestone plateau, the White Peak, is ringed by jagged moorland, the Dark Peak. Moving north to where the two worlds meet, the hikes now promised less history, more gradients. Castleton and the flat Hope Valley soon mutated into a steep pull up 1,516ft Win Hill. Yesterday, rain had trickled down our neck; now it was beads of sweat.

The final scramble up the triangular peak, thrusting out of the moorland like a child’s drawing, unleashed a silence-inducing 360-degree panorama: the dramatic trilogy of Mam Tor, Great Ridge and Lose Hill, the cloud-draped edge of Kinder Scout and, far in the distance, Stanage Edge, a wall of millstone grit that draws climbers like iron filings to a magnet.

For every up, there’s a down — hiking’s yin and yang. We descended to the River Derwent for a pint of Copper Dragon Golden Pippin — call me old-fashioned, but beer should never sound like an effeminate fruit — and skirted the Ladybower Reservoir, where the ash, sycamore, oak and birch were displaying the form of New England in the fall.

And that’s when we met Colin Firth. Or rather, Colin Firth’s trailer. Mr Darcy was back in Derbyshire, filming When Did You Last See Your Father with Jim Broadbent. But this is a walk that reveals ghosts as well as actors.

At the top of a wooded hill to one side of the reservoir, where fallen pine needles had muted all sound like deep snow, a violent wind sucked us out of the forest onto an ancient road where Roman legions once tramped between forts near Hope and Glossop. Hikers, perhaps overindulging on Kendal Mint Cake, claim to have seen spectral battalions marching out of the mist. Today, however, the troops were lying low, perhaps dreaming of mellow Tuscan sunshine.

We found our own sun in the shape of a snapping, hissing fire at the splendid Cheshire Cheese, at Hope. Seduced by Hartington beer and mellow conversation, we missed our bus, but, proving we really had left city life far behind, the landlord piled us into his car to drive back to our Castleton B&B. ‘That ever happened to you in Clapham?’ asked Reid drily.

Yet for all the scenic glory and compelling history, your memory of hiking in Derbyshire may well be the astoundingly generous breakfasts. If the Devonshire Arms had filled my boots, The George, all flagstone floors and beams in the shadow of Peveril Castle, filled my boots, rucksack and cagoule — and threw in a couple more sausages for my bobble hat.

After 30 minutes’ post-gluttony recovery, we yomped into the Peak Cavern, or Devil’s Arse. So huge is the gash in the rockface — the first act in a subterranean drama reaching for 12 miles under the earth — that communities of rope-makers once inhabited cottages inside the cave. Soot from their fires still coats the ceiling, the legacy of a local craft that continued until the 1970s.

The dank, dark interior might have suited rope-makers, but on a day of searing sunshine, it was purgatory for a hiker. A short drive to Edale and the scene was set for a climactic three-hour trek up and along the 2,087ft-high escarpment of Kinder Scout.

Thirty-mile views, surreal rock formations worthy of the Australian outback, and a swathe of peaty moorland justified our perspiration. Reid, a dream member of any pub-quiz team, still had historical and geographical Tourette’s as we took our final strides. He was, of course, talking about a pub: the Quiet Woman, at Earl Sterndale, so named because, hundreds of years earlier, the landlord had beheaded his wife to stop her nagging, Equally ghoulishly, one of its present bar tables had previously been used by an undertaker for laying out bodies — the perfect place for a stiff drink. The devil would surely approve.

Travel details: the Devonshire Arms (01629 733259, www.devonshirehotels.co.uk) has doubles from £125, B&B. The George (01433 620 238, www.thegeorgecastleton.co.uk) has doubles from £65, B&B.

Walking Weekends in the Peak District by Mark Reid is published by InnWay (£8.95; www.innway.co.uk). Peak Cavern (01433 620285, www.devilsarse.com) has a small museum, and guided tours are available; adults £6, children £4.

For more information, visit www.visitpeakdistrict.com.

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