Odin Mine - Peal District

[Deleted member 12539]

We needed to check out the motorhome on Saturday to see if the new solar panel set up does it's job, so we had a short trip out to Odin Mine, just outside of Castleton in Derbyshire.
I got the wild camp location off this site and arrived just after lunch on Saturday with my wife and son in the van. The spot is at the end of a road that has been moving 9cm a year, so seeing that the Japanese earthquake has been so high profile, it seemed apt that we would visit Castleton in the Peak district.
After a good two hour walk up the hill and on the broken road that has constantly been repaired after several land movements, until the council got fed up repairing and closed the road to traffic access. The road was initially built to allow an easier drive to the other side of Winnats Pass which is currently a very steep road through the limestone hill.
The solar panel kept the leisure battery topped up nicely during the day and the supply dropped to only 11.9v in the evening, and in the morning was charged back up to 13.4v.
After a 'full English' in the van, we drove into Castleton town centre and paid £4.50 to park in one of the coach bays. We took a chance that we would not get 'booked' for incorrectly using a 'coach only' bay but seeing that other parking bays were limited to 3.5t (and we are 4.0t) we decided to pay coach parking fees and hope for the best.
A really good 'shake down' wild camp just to let us know we had forgot to pack the tin foil (for the oven) and that we were just on empty with our gas!!

 

[Deleted member 775]

glad you enjoyed your weekend ,we have stayed at that spot once or twice .as for the parking as you drive toward castleton dow the closed off road there is a grassed car park area on the right , as far as i can recall there is no weight limit there and cheaper than the coach park and there wasnt a time limit ether when we were there last, also you could park on the road side free . there are quite a few places to overnight in the area if you go up winnats pass to the top turn right there is a large lay by that looks ok too .just a point of intrest mabey to some, up on the tops there there is the site of a couple of spitfire crash sites from the war time infact there are over 100 crash sites up in the dark and white peaks that i have logged on an ord survey map of the area many that i have visited myself . anyone that is intrested in the history if you go to glossop there is the museum with a area dedicated to the brave pilots that lost there lives in many of the crashes . or i can let you have some web sites on the subject .