I recently spent some days in England’s beautiful Peak District National Park and was immediately enchanted by its impressive landscapes and cute little villages.

The bucolic charm of the area was certainly the reason for its use as a filming location for tons of movies, including several Pride and Prejudice adaptations, The 2011 film version of Jane Eyre and Shane Meadow’s excellent 2004 thriller Dead Man’s Shoes.

Maybe most famously, the area also features in a lot of scenes from Rob Reiner’s 1987 cult classic The Princess Bride, and while I was exploring the National Park, I made sure to drop by all of these locations.

Here’s everything you need to know if you want to follow in the footsteps of Buttercup, Westley, Fezzik and Inigo Montoya.

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Transport and Accommodation in the Area

Most of the Princess Bride filming locations are located close to Bakewell in the Derbyshire Dales and Castleton in the High Peak Area of the Peak District National Park. Both towns can easily be reached from Sheffield by using the park’s good bus network.

On this useful website, you can find both a map of the bus network and the current schedules of all buses operating in the area. As of 2025, the bus fares in the UK are still capped at £3, so you’ll never pay more, no matter how far you go.

The Princess Bride Filming Locations in the Peak District

There are two clusters of filming locations that make for good day trips from Sheffield or any other city or town in the area. In the surroundings of Castleton and Hathersage in the High Peak’s Hope Valley, lie Cave Dale and Carl Wark, which you can easily visit in one day.

In the vicinity of Bakewell in the Derbyshire Dales are Haddon Hall, Robin Hood Stride and Lathkill Dale, which you could also see in a single day, but that would require a longer hike or some good pre-planning with sometimes infrequent bus connections (some of which only run on the weekend).

Otherwise, you could split up the locations around Bakewell into two days. All of the filming locations are in beautiful surroundings and very well visiting in their own right, even if you’re not a hopeless cinephile. Let’s start with the locations in the Hope Valley.

Cave Dale

Coordinates: N 53°20.332 W 01°46.657 and N 53°20.268 W 01°46.682

This pretty valley sits right outside Castleton Village and has been used as a filming location for several films and TV shows (most recently for HBO’s House of the Dragon). In the Princess Bride, it’s the location where the Dread Pirate Roberts reveals himself to be Westley.

After Buttercup and Westley tumble down the slope, they land at the bottom of the dale near these coordinates: N 53°20.332 W 01°46.657. The slope above is very rocky here, so the scene of them rolling down is clearly the result of some movie magic.

If you follow the valley south for a few minutes and then turn around at N 53°20.268 W 01°46.682 looking towards Castleton, a great view opens up with the ruined stone tower of Peveril castle on the northern slope and the hills surrounding the Hope Valley behind.

In the film, this is the entrance to the Fire Swamp and the castle tower has been replaced by a matte-painting of a forest that Buttercup and Westley run towards. Lucky for me, as I could walk back to Castleton without battling any Rodents of unusual size.

Carl Wark

Coordinates: N 53°19.773 W 01°36.720

Shortly before that scene, Buttercup and Westley (still disguised as the Dread Pirate Roberts) are seen fleeing along the ridge of a hill strewn with large boulders while being chased by Humperdinck and his men. This scene was filmed atop Carl Wark near Hathersage, a natural hill that was partly fortified during the Iron Age.

Carl Wark can be reached by a short hike from either the Surprise View Car park or the Fox House Inn (both of which can be reached by bus from Sheffield or Castleton). The scenes were filmed in the centre of the plateau and clearly from the top of one of the large erratic boulders.

The prominent hill that you can see in the background during the conversation between Westley and Buttercup is Higger Tor, a few hundred meters to the north. It’s worth visiting in its own right, and the views back to Carl Wark and beyond are pretty amazing.

Haddon Hall

Coordinates: N 53°11.624 W 01°38.991

The impressive medieval country house Haddon Hall stands in for Prince Humperdinck’s Castle. The 11th-century building has been beautifully refurbished during the Tudor Period and also is well-worth visiting whether you’re a film fan or not, although I thought the entrance fee very steep at a whopping £28.

Haddon Hall lies about 3km or 2mi. south-east of the pretty town of Bakewell in the Derbyshire Dales area of the National Park, and you can either walk there or take the bus from the stop at the western end of Bakewell’s Matlock Street.

The scene where Humperdinck announces his betrothal to Buttercup to the people of Florin has been filmed in the Lower Courtyard right behind the entrance gate. When looking at the eastern facade of the inner castle walls, you will notice, that the tower behind the prince is missing in real life, as it has been added for the film.

The camera then swings to the left, where we see Buttercup walking out of the main doorway of the castle, which is still as attractively surrounded by growing vines as it was in 1987.

While a lot of the interior scenes (including Inigo Montoya’s duel with Count Rugen) were filmed in southern England’s Penshurst Palace, there are a few scenes that were actually shot inside Haddon Hall, as well.

All of these take place in Humperdinck’s study, and were filmed in the castle’s main Hall immediately to your right when you step inside Haddon Hall. It’s easily recognizable by the huge fireplace and surrounding wainscoting covering the walls.

In the film, there are also two exterior shots of the castle: the establishing shot with the sheep crossing the wooden bridge and the scene of Buttercup riding away. Both of these were filmed from the southern side of the River Wye, but as it seems, both spots are on private property and can’t be reached nowadays. At least I didn’t find a way to get there legally (If you find one, let me know).

Bradley Rocks Farm near Birchover

Coordinates: N 53°09.338 W 01°39.339

This small stone barn in a field near the small village of Birchover is where the scenes on Buttercup’s farm have been shot. It’s really nothing more than an overgrown ruin today, but you can easily visit it on a walk from Birchover to nearby Robin Hood Stride.

The lovers say goodbye to each other near the south-western corner of the barn, where the public footpath runs. The pretty background view of the hills is completely obscured by trees nowadays, but if you walk a few metres to the west, it’ll open up.

Robin Hood Stride

Coordinates: N 53°09.431 W 01°39.956

If you follow the path West into the valley and climb up on the other side, you’ll come to Robin Hood Stride, an impressive rock formation with great views all around. At the northern foot of the main rockface, you’ll find several large boulders, which mark the location where Westley fights Fezzik in the film.

The many boulders and the fact that not a lot has changed over the last 40 years make it easy to match up the angles of the scene with the real-life features. Make sure to also climb to the top of the rock formation for some amazing views of the surrounding hills and valleys.

From the top, you also have a similar view to the establishing shot of Buttercup’s Farm. It doesn’t match up exactly, as I’m pretty sure it has been filmed from a lower spot before all the trees obscured the view, but I’d say it’s close enough.

Lathkill Dale

Coordinates: Somewhere around N 53°11.178 W 01°44.528 (the exact coords are on private property!)

Finally, there is Lathkill Dale near Monyash, where the Battle of the Wits between Westley and Vizzini was filmed. This is the only location where I couldn’t figure out the exact spot it was shot from.

I can definitely say that it was filmed somewhere near the spot where Lathkill Dale and Cales Dale meet up, as I spotted both the wooded mountain that you can see in the background and the rocky cliff face in front of it, but for the life of me I wasn’t able to find the place where both matched up in the right angle.

After walking back and forth along the northern slope of the valley, I came to the conclusion that the scene must have been shot from the southern side of Lathkill Dale and the Western side of Cales Dale, which would put it on a private pasture.

My picture represents the closest I got to the filming location, which was around these coordinates: N 53°11.382 W 01°43.911. If someone manages to match it up better without trespassing, feel free to let me know!

Map of the Princess Bride Locations in the Peak District

All of the locations described above can be found in this map of the Peak District.

Other Princess Bride Filming Locations

In this post I intentionally focused on the scenes shot in the Peak District, but other parts of the movie have been filmed in Southern England and Ireland.

Besides Penshurst Palace in Kent, where many of the interior scenes of Humperdinck’s Castle were filmed, other scenes were shot at Burnham Beeches in Buckinghamshire and at Ockham’s All Saints Church in Surrey. Finally, the Cliffs of Insanity are Ireland’s famous Cliffs of Moher.

See Also

The Ultimate 5-Day Itinerary for England’s Lake District National Park

10 Exciting Things to See and Do in Blackpool, The UK’s Most Famous Seaside Resort