Travel special – Peak district: Away from the flock

Derbyshire’s landscape is hauntingly beautiful, says Stuart Reid, so long as you can make your peace with the sheep

Sheep are ugly, dirty, stupid and cowardly, but by far the nastiest thing about them is that in the countryside they are given precedence over dogs. Take your dog for a romp in the Peak District, for example, or on the North York Moors, and he will tear about like a mad thing, tongue out, eyes wild with excitement, his whole being alive with unconditional gratitude. Then you see a notice saying that dogs are to be kept on a lead, and the bottom falls out of your world and you feel angry and aggrieved. If you are fortunate enough to be a cockney, you will reflect bitterly that you can allow a dog off the lead just about anywhere in London, including the Brompton Oratory, but that here in the heart of England, surrounded by miles and miles of heather and scrub, of rock and rabbit holes — and, OK, the occasional sheep — you have to put poor Fido on a leash.