The how and where you can and can’t commercially film in the Peak District National Park is clearly articulated on the PDNPA website.

Look under FAQ’s. 

If you’re pointing a camera at something or someone in order to sell, film or promote something for income then that is commercial activity. That includes ‘only on social media’. It also includes paid promotions by influencers. 

There is a proper way to apply and a fee to pay that is commensurate with the size of the commercial activity. If you are, let’s say, a small handmade outdoor sandal brand you’ll probably pay less than Tom Cruise driving a train off a quarry. 

If you’re trying to enhance your brand / product / thing by showing it off in the splendour of the original National Park without being willing to pay a fee to do so, that’s not cricket. It’s not even tiddlywinks. It’s depriving the National Park of income at a time when financially it isn’t ‘on’ the bones of its arse, it’s worn through the bones.

You’d pay to use a studio so be prepared to pay to use an outdoor studio. 

If you deny that you’re commercially filming (when chatted to by a ranger) and then post stuff on the products page of your website several months later then that’s the sort of fibbing that attracts letters from lawyers.

Expect folks just to check with the licensing team at the Park if you have stuff on your socials or website. It’s not grassing it’s checking. 

All the details as well as the phone number and email address of the licensing team are on the website. Are on the website. Are on the website. Are on ….

THE WEBSITE

For the record it was Sunday 8th March when i saw my first of the season. Near Curbar Edge.

In October last year, following a public consultation, the Derbyshire Dales Council voted in a Public Space Protection Order which was effective from 10 October 2025

It prohibited the following actions:

• The lighting of fires;
• The lighting or use of stoves (with the exception of portable stoves using gas or liquid fuel with a heat output of no more than 3000 watts weighing less than 600g excluding fuel)
• Barbecues and other devices using an open flame;
• The discarding of lighted matches and other things likely to cause fire.

In public spaces.

The PSPO was extended by agreement to cover (and compliment the existing restrictions and byelaws within) the Peak District National Park, the Chatsworth and Longshaw Estates and the Eastern Moors Partnership land. 

You can more or less ignore the bit about ‘3000 watts’. I don’t know anybody that knows anybody that knows why that metric was imposed. And Rangers are not carrying a heat output meter round. 

What you can do is understand, appreciate and accept that a small gas or liquid fuel stove carried and used for the purpose of making a hot drink or cooking your meal on a hike, camping trip or DofE exped is still allowed. Just like it always has been. 

Any other use of flame per the list at the top of this post isn’t and won’t be tolerated. 

Along with some colleagues i’m spending quite a lot of time this week voluntarily qualifying as a ‘Vegetation Fire Operator’ aka someone that is trained and assessed in the skills to put out wildfires (have we just been cuffing it until now 🧐). A narrative running through the excellent learning is the stark reality, understanding and acceptance that wildfire is rapidly becoming a major issue in the UK and that lives, properties and landscapes will be lost to it. 

 

Books for Books Day

In no particular order …

One Thousand Days – Sirius
A book about an extraordinary military patrol in Greenland which also happens to be best book ever written on selecting and training high performing teams

Joss Naylor MBE Was Here – the best book ever written on human powered endeavour.

How To Connect With Nature – moved me from looking to seeing. Vital reading.

The White Hotel – as a kid growing up in the North East books were my escape. They took me places. This book took me the furthest.

At What Point – outstanding, important, fierce, imaginative poetry for the here and the now

A Place of Tides – an example to all of us

Maquis – a remarkable memoir. Read Horned Pigeon straight after it. Lest we forget.

Between Silk and Cyanide – Because.

The South Yorkshire Moors – i’ve been reading and re-reading it for years. An unmatched work of reference for the moors and valleys which i frequent.

Millican Dalton – my ‘ex landlord’.

Goose Green – i was reflecting the other day on how the majority of people salivating over another war have not been to war nor will they ever do so. And those that have experienced the horrors of war are adamantly against another. This book is amongst the best ever written on the personal cost of combat.

A few from a great day yesterday at @north_lees_hall_farm (on Instagram) with Nick and Liz. They were sorting the in-lamb ewes ready for release on to the open moorland.

I took quite a lot of photographs to give them plenty of content because somehow in their manically busy days they are hoping to use Instagram to tell the warts-and-all day-to-day story of the farm and of the North Lees Estate which is a farming landscape that’s also incredibly popular with visitors.

Give them a wave if you see them, a follow on the socials and please please please adhere to the @thecountrysidecode.

Multi-agency presence for another day of engagement and enforcement activity as part of the launch of the Rural Crime Initiative from @southyorksmca and South Yorkshire Police. Really good opportunity for the @eastern_moors_partnership rangers to undertake networking and knowledge sharing particularly with our friends in the Off Road and Rural Crime Policing Team.

‘Slight’ sympathy for the person that went speeding past the @norfarms just as multiple traffic police assets were rolling out the car park 🤦🏻‍♂️.

Thanks once again to Mike and his team at the Norfolk Arms for hosting important community activity like this 👍👍.

Perhaps my favourite story of Springtime …

There was a tradition amongst the Brown Edge quarrymen concerning the first bumblebee of the summer. When the first bee of the year was seen, the then owner of the quarry, Henry Hancock, put five shillings to the men’s two shillings and the youngest quarryman was detailed to take an empty barrow to the Norfolk Arms and return with several gallons of beer. 🍻🐝

I imagine not much quarrying got done the rest of that day!

Brown Edge Quarry lies between Ringinglow Road and Brown Edge Farm above the Norfolk Arms. The quarry was worked from at least 1836 and provided good quality stone slates for the building trade. It closed about 1873. Henry Hancock owned the quarry for about its last decade.

It’s an easily accessible area now rich in flora and fauna. If you go for a visit don’t miss the WW2 aircraft crash engine parts that are hiding in plain sight on your walk in from Ringinglow Rd, and it’s also worth a diversion to take in the holloway that runs east from Brown Edge

(SK 28105 83836).

from the edge(s)

and moor(s).

More words in due course.

Under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 2000, you must keep your dog on a lead no more than 2 metres long on open access land between 1 March and 31 July – to protect ground-nesting birds.

And also in livestock areas.

On Public Rights of Way (footpaths, bridleways etc indicated on an Ordnance Survey map) dogs must be under close effective control not necessarily on a lead, unless required by local signs or near livestock.

It’s literally the law.

Day one of ground nesting bird season this year and as of about 4pm today the ranger team at @eastern_moors_partnership have heard over a dozen different reasons for why particular dog owners are certain the law doesn’t apply to them and or their dog(s). Including someone who referred to the birds as ‘migrants’ and therefore they had ‘second priority’ behind him and his dog. Racism in nature. Nice.

In the same way as traffic speed limit laws apply even where there are no speed cameras, the ground nesting bird law still applies even if you can’t see a ranger 😉.

For the folks trying to protect habitats for wildlife, ground nesting bird season is the most difficult of the year. We will be lied to, sworn at and threatened over the coming months. I’ve already had the ‘don’t talk to me’ open palm to the face, today.

To all the lovely dogs and their owners that were doing the right thing for nature – thank you. Especially the little Romanian rescue dog on Big Moor that remembered me and my biscuit stash from when we met a few weeks ago. Fusses were had. 🐾.

This is a story about 2 kittens that were dumped in their carry crates over a wall on to Ramsley Moor on the eastern edge of the Peak District.

Watch this …

Then watch this quite remarkable bit of thermal drone footage …

In the military we used to talk about the ‘shock of capture’ … and this terrified wee thing had just spent over 2 weeks on moorland in winter and seen its sibling die …

…. then all of a sudden it’s at the Ranger Base in bright lights and noise.

It inhaled a whole packet of chicken then jumped in the sink and then went and hid under the fridge.

It’s like Bravo Two Zero for cats !!!

We think it’s a she. She is temporarily called Ramsley.

Ramsley unsurprisingly has quite an appetite …

and is now spending the night in a nice warm house in Sheffield before heading to the vet tomorrow.

She has frayed edges to her ears, a lump in her back, big paws and a few scratches here and there. We’re all hoping she’ll be okay after a few vet visits.

It’s hard to think of a situation which would make it ‘okay’ to throw 2 kittens over a wall on to moorland. Words really do fail me.

It’s pixelated out, but this is the state of her deceased sibling when we found it earlier in the week …

But we are where we are. There’s lots of shit in the world but you have to do what you can to help those that you can help. Human or animal.

There have been quite a few of the Eastern Moors Partnership rangers involved in finding, keeping tabs on, feeding and catching the kitten. Not least Jane and her awareness to keep monitoring the area where the crates were found …. which led to the discovery of the deceased kitten and a glimpse of the white one. I’m also struck by the memory of 4 rangers volunteering to stand in freezing rain and driving snow late at night peering in to the darkness through thermal imagers looking for this kitten. Derbyshire Constabulary Rural Crime Team were also involved in investigating the dumping of the kittens and the analysis of the deceased one.

Thank you to everyone. The team works 👍

An update to follow after the visit to the vet.

Update 14th February ….

Female. 2.6kg (underweight). 6 months ish old. Generally good health. Tail bent from previous trauma. Wasn’t chipped. Now chipped and registered and first vaccinated. Quite feisty !!! and vocal. Adopted and now off the moors and residing in a semi detached in Crosspool with her own room.

Happy ending / new start …. Thanks again.

Dear Owners,

When you stopped in the lay-by in late January and dumped us in our carry-cases over the wall on the moors you probably thought that was the end of us.

You could’ve just rang a cats shelter. Were we that bad ?

We had been surviving on food out of a nearby bin and living in a space in the stone wall. Black and White Cat died a few days ago from hunger and the cold. I have had to eat some of my sibling to stay alive.

These winter nights have been perishingly cold and wet.

I saw the police come and take what was left of Black and White Cat away today. They said something about trying to catch me and look after me, but i was too scared and went and hid.

I have no food at all now.

Why didn’t you just ring a cats shelter ?

Were we that bad ?

Yours confused, scared and cold,

White and Black Cat