A huge landslip in a quiet Peak District valley, its gritstone towers looking from across the dale like a ruined castle
Over half a mile long, Alport Castles is thought to be the largest landslide in Britain. A great slice of the gritstone edge (gritstone is a coarse sandstone) has slid away from the east side of Alport Dale, leaving a jumble of broken towers. The biggest, known as the Tower, looks from across the valley like a castle on its mound. The likeliest cause is the soft shale underneath giving way under the heavy rock above, though geologists still debate it. Ravens and peregrine falcons nest on the crags, which are unstable and not for climbing. The land is part of the National Trust’s Alport Valley in the Peak District. A popular circuit of about 16 km starts at Fairholmes in the Upper Derwent valley, above Ladybower Reservoir, crosses the moor to the top of the landslip and comes back past Alport Castles Farm, where the suffragette Hannah Mitchell was born in 1871.
