The sky is beginning to blush as the afternoon train from Sheffield pulls in to Edale, the starting post of the Pennine Way. I drop my bags at the Western House B&B and head out into the sunset, along a muddy path that runs beside a brook, to a gentle amble through sheep fields, whose edges and crevices are lined with snow. As the moon brightens overhead, I stop at a grass-covered outcrop of rock that seems to lean eagerly forward, the better to spy on the valley below. Here I stand beside grazing sheep, breathing in the calm – until a vehicle reversing in the distance ruptures the quiet with its warning beeps.
This outcrop, it turns out, is folk performer Bella Hardy's favourite spot in Edale; she commemorated it in Broadlee Bank, a pensive instrumental on her second album, In the Shadow of Mountains. We pause there together the next morning, on an icy walk from her family home in Upper Booth to the centre of Edale, when the tips of Mam Tor and Lose Hill are hidden beneath thick grey fog.
I was right about the spying. Bella, 28, loves the bank because she can see everything from here: the train line, the constellation of booths – the hamlets clustered around farms that collectively make up Edale – the derelict barn she dreams of turning into a recording studio. On a cold day such as this, she can tell who's home by the wisps of smoke rising from individual chimneys.
Bella's parents moved here from Oxfordshire, when she was a baby. Until recently her father managed the local youth hostel. Although she lives in Edinburgh now, and spends much of her time on tour, she returns to Edale for a week every month.
"It's the place where I feel closest to who I am," she says. "I'm always dreaming of Edale. When I visualise things, it's always in Edale. It's an inspiring place, full of inspiring people."
Even on an overnight trip, you can understand Bella's romantic connection to the valley. It's remarkably accessible – just over 30 minutes from Sheffield by train, on a line that also links it to Manchester – yet barely seems to exist in the 21st century. There are no street lamps, only one mobile mast (Orange) and the water pipes regularly clog with silt.
What Edale lacks in modern amenities, it more than compensates for in terrific walks: a dense network of roads and paths, slopes and climbs, spiralling in every direction. On sunny days, the area is busy; but clouds and cold predominate, says Bella, keeping Edale generally placid.
With so little to do in Edale, people have to make their own fun. The result is a creative community with a tireless imagination. Bella takes me to meet her neighbour, Berlie Doherty, an author who also plays in a folk band with Bella's mum; and Mark Wallington, another writer, whose latest book, The Uke of Wallington, charts his adventures touring around the UK with a ukulele. Both talk with amused admiration of Downfall Productions, a group named after the nearby Kinder waterfall, who organise much of the cultural activity of the village: current offerings include an alternative talent show, Edale's Not Got Talent; a Desert Island Discs for notable residents; and the pantomime that has been a fixture since the 1970s.
Music is a big part of village life. Once a month the Folk Train (folktrain.org.uk) from Sheffield brings in a band to play a gig at the Rambler Inn (01433 670268, theramblerinn.com), one of Edale's two pubs, before catching a return service. Last year, the Edale folk festival was established – picking up where the Edale bluegrass festival left off two decades ago. It runs 10-12 May 2013 (edalefolkfestival.co.uk); Bella is performing on 12 May.
Edale made Bella a folk performer: she started playing fiddle as part of her primary school ceilidh band, and joined her parents and two older sisters in the village choir. A few years ago, she began to wonder whether Edale had any traditional ballads that she could add to the choir's repertoire of Christmas carols. A Google search unearthed an 1867 book, The Ballads and Songs of Derbyshire. This became the basis for an album, The Dark Peak and the White (darkpeakandwhite.com), which Bella released last year with the help of the Peak District national park's sustainable development fund. For that project, she travelled across the Peak District, gathering folk tales to put into her own original songs, and composing music for existing lyrics inspired by the landscape.
"It felt important to write tunes that were reflective of the feeling of the area," she says. "I'd go out to cold, wet locations in my car, with my fiddle in the back seat, go for little walks and record on to my phone."
In between, she would return to Edale, and soon realised she wanted to do an album of Edale songs. Usually Bella works to strict deadlines – when she releases Battleplan in April, it will be her sixth album in less than six years – but she's keen to let the Edale album happen more naturally. "If it takes five or 10 years, that's fine. I want to do it because songwriting is my way to remember places and people: I remember lyrics, I don't really remember anything else."
Loving Edale as she does, she finds it difficult to leave. But she does, because, she says, "I've always been scared of not going out and living a bit." Occasionally she worries that her parents will move away from the valley. Edale is a conservation area, and Bella is enough of a realist to know that, as a folk performer she will never be able to afford to buy her own place here. For now, she feels incredibly lucky – spoilt, even – to be able to call this quiet valley home.
