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The limestone hills of the White Peaks are riddled with water-worn cave systems, best explored in the four show caves within walking distance of CASTLETON , ten miles northeast of Buxton. It's an agreeable small town, overlooked by Mam Tor, ringed by hills and cut through by a babbling river lined with stone cottages. Indeed, as a base for local walks it's hard to beat, and the hikers resting up in the quiet Market Place near the church have the choice of a fine spread of local accommodation and services. Overseeing the whole ensemble is Peveril Castle (April-Oct daily 10am-6pm; Nov-March Wed-Sun 10am-4pm; £2.30; EH), from which the village gets its name. Its construction was started by William I's illegitimate son William Peveril to protect the king's rights to the forest that then covered vast areas of the Peak District. After a stiff climb up to the keep, you can trace much of the surviving curtain wall, which commands great views of the Hope Valley.

The closest cavern to town, the Peak Cavern (Easter-Oct daily 10am-5pm; Nov-Easter Sat & Sun 10am-4pm; £5; tel 01433/620285) is tucked in a gully at the back of the town, its gaping mouth once providing shelter for a rope factory and a small village, of which a vague floorplan remains. Daniel Defoe, visiting in the eighteenth century, noted the cavern's colourful local name, the "Devil's Arse", after the fiendish fashion in which the interior contours twisted and turned. Twenty minutes' walk out of town along the road west to Winnat's Pass (there's a parallel route, across the fields) lies Speedwell Cavern (daily: Easter-Oct 9.30am-6pm; Nov-Easter 10am-5pm; last entry 1hr before closing; £5.50; tel 01433/620512). This is, at 600-feet below ground, the deepest cave accessible to the public in Britain. That said, there's precious little to see, with the main drama coming with the means of access itself - down a hundred dripping steps and then by boat through a quarter-mile-long claustrophobic tunnel that was blasted out in search of lead. At the end lies the Bottomless Pit, a pool where 40,000 tons of mining rubble were dumped without raising the water level.

The other two caves are the world's only source of the sparkling fluorspar known as Blue John . Highly prized for ornaments and jewellery for the past 250 years, this semi-precious stone comes in a multitude of hues from blue through deep red to yellow, depending on its hydrocarbon impurities. Before being cut and polished it must be soaked in pine resin, a process originally carried out in France, where the term bleu-jaune (after its primary colours) provided the source of its English name. The Treak Cliff Cavern (daily: March-Oct 10am-5pm; Nov-Feb 10am-4pm; last entry 40min before closing; £5.50; tel 01433/620571), a few hundred yards along the hillside from Speedwell, contains the best examples of the stone in situ and a good deal more in the shop. This is also the best cave to visit in its own right, dripping - literally - with stalactites (some up to 100,000 years old), flowstone and bizarre rock formations, all visible on an entertaining forty-minute walking tour through the main cave system. Tours of the Blue John Cavern (daily: Easter-Oct 9.30am-5.30pm; Nov-Easter 9.30am-dusk; £6; tel 01433/620638) dive deeper into the rock, with narrow steps and sloping paths following an ancient watercourse through whirlpool-hollowed chambers down to the Dining Room Cavern, where a former owner once held a banquet. Blue John Cavern is another fifteen minutes' signposted walk beyond Treak Cliff, and there's direct access off the A625, just west of Castleton.