The Peak District turns 75 this year — it was designated the UK's first national park in 1951 — and its birthday is a good excuse to look at how radical that idea once was. Access to England's hills was contested ground, literally. In April 1932, around 400 ramblers deliberately broke the law by walking up Kinder Scout, the park's highest point at 636m, in what became known as the Mass Trespass. Landowners wanted the moorland kept for grouse shooting; police were waiting on the hill, fights broke out and six men were arrested, with five jailed for up to six months. The harsh sentences backfired, swelling public support for the Right to Roam movement and helping pave the way to the National Parks Act of 1949 — and the Peak District's creation two years later.

Today the park covers 1,438 sq km across Derbyshire, Cheshire, Staffordshire, Greater Manchester and Yorkshire. Broadly, it splits in two: the White Peak's limestone valleys and gorges in the south, and the Dark Peak's gritstone ridges and wind-scoured moorland to the north. It has long pulled in writers and film crews alike — Charlotte Brontë wrote Jane Eyre while staying in Hathersage, and Tom Cruise shot the train-crash set piece of the recent Mission: Impossible at Darlton Quarry.

For a first visit, the classics earn their reputation. Sunrise on Mam Tor is now something of a social-media pilgrimage, which brings parking problems, so consider Curbar Edge instead for early views over the valley. Chatsworth House, built between 1687 and 1708, packs in art by Gainsborough and Bacon plus a 42-hectare garden; Bakewell is the spot to try both the tart and the older Bakewell pudding. Stanage Edge, the park's longest gritstone escarpment at 5.6km, makes a fine half-day walk. Day two could be the 12km circular up Kinder Scout via Jacob's Ladder — five to six hours, and the opening stretch of the Pennine Way — followed by a wander around Castleton, the Blue John Cavern or a dip of the feet at Padley Gorge.

It's an easy car-free trip too. The Hope Valley Line between Manchester and Sheffield stops at Grindleford, Hathersage, Bamford and Edale; the Buxton Line serves the west of the park, and the Derwent Valley Line runs from Derby to Matlock. Where to sleep? The George in Hathersage — a 500-year-old coaching inn name-checked in Jane Eyre — has rooms from £145, while Darwin Forest's woodland cabins, some with hot tubs and dog-friendly setups, start at £379 for three nights.

If you've more time, cycle the traffic-free Monsal Trail or Tissington Trail, tackle the 37km Nine Edges Walk, or add stately homes like Lyme Park, Haddon Hall and Thornbridge Estate. Buxton's Victorian Pavilion Gardens and opera house, plus villages such as Eyam, Tissington and Ashford-in-the-Water, round things out nicely. Seventy-five years on, the right to roam these hills is worth exercising — and worth celebrating.