What do you do with old opencast land – those huge, barren dips in the ground left over from when areas were dug up for coal? Lots of those sites across Britain are being rewilded, but in the Peak District 283 acres of ex-mining land is being turned into the UK’s first national park gateway ‘resort town’. It’ll be called PEAK Gateway, and this is what we know so far.
The new resort was teased last year but now construction has officially begun. It’ll be built on the eastern boundary of the Peak District national park near Chesterfield, and it hopes to serve as a base for people to wander the Peak District without the need for a car. Kind of like the British countryside’s answer to a ski resort.
If everything planned for PEAK Gateway comes true, it could reach a mammoth value of over £1bn. It’ll feature a number of hotels with 2,000 total rooms, 250 holiday lodges and a collection of leisure facilities, educational spaces, shops and a wellness clinic.
Being in a national park, it’s only natural that the resort has sustainability at its centre. Around 70 percent of the land will be kept as green space to continue boosting biodiversity. It’s also been suggested that PEAK will produce its own renewable electricity and process its own waste.
Work has already started on the site. The first stage, which includes accommodation, retail and leisure facilities, is forecast to be finished and open to the public by 2028.
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