First they used drones to shame people walking their dogs in the Peak District during the first lockdown. Then they dyed a quarry pool black to make its toxic blue waters less inviting to furloughed swimmers. Now Derbyshire police have turned their attention to “stupid” hikers who ignored a snowy weather forecast and got stuck on one of county’s highest passes this weekend. The force’s rural crime team lambasted the owners of more than 200 cars who drove to the top of Snake Pass, a trans-Pennine road between Sheffield and Manchester on Saturday, and then expected the police to rescue them with their “magical snowmobiles”. “We’ll deal with what we can, but our underpants aren’t on the outside and we can only knock so much common sense back into society,” the team said on its Facebook page. The incident came after parts of northern England, the Midlands and Wales awoke to snow this weekend. The Met Office has issued a yellow weather warning for ice in eastern Scotland and the north-east on Sunday and Monday. It also forecast some sleet or snow on higher hills on Sunday evening. Police in Wales said officers had turned away people who wanted to walk up Snowdon in breach of stay-at-home rules, including some from Milton Keynes and London. Wales is at alert level four, meaning non-essential travel is banned and exercise must start and finish at home. Derbyshire is in English tier 4, meaning people must stay at home and not leave their area, other than for legally permitted reasons. So is Greater Manchester. Sheffield, on the eastern end of Snake Pass, is in tier 3, where residents are told not travel into a tier 4 area. Derbyshire police said many of those parked on the top of the pass were not only ill-equipped for the weather, but also ignoring government advice to exercise within their own tiers. “It seems like many didn’t have the common sense to check the forecast, dress themselves suitably, check they had a capable vehicle and/or driving skills, never mind the fact that they perhaps shouldn’t have been stretching the advice given by the government so as not to overburden our NHS,” the rural crime team wrote. “Never mind, though. Just ring the police and expect them to come along with their magical snowmobiles. Of course, with our superpowers we can simultaneously deal with similar situations in the Goyt Valley, Mam Nick, Curbar Gap and others. And we’re Covid-proof, didn’t you know? Joking aside, please don’t be stupid. It shouldn’t need a greater explanation than that.” PC Andy Shaw said the force had to help rescue about 60 cars that become trapped in the Peak District on Saturday. Snow on the Snake Pass “largely cleared itself”, he said, with most drivers getting into trouble on the Cat and Fiddle Hill between Macclesfield and Buxton, and Long Hill between Buxton and Whaley Bridge. “Most drivers I spoke to were not from Derbyshire,” he said. The mountain rescue team from Glossop, on the Manchester side of Snake Pass, was called out on Saturday afternoon to help two women who had got lost on Bleaklow, a suitably desolate section of moorland. “Due to challenging conditions and fading light, the pair became disoriented and called for our assistance,” the rescuers said. The Glossop team put out a plea in November to “Instagram hikers” who had been going up to Bleaklow and the nearby Higher Shelf Stones to take selfies. The site contains large sections of a US military plane, a B-29 that plunged into a ridge in fog in 1948, killing the 13 men on board. They also asked people to tell them if they had managed to make their own way to safety after calling for assistance. The request, however, appears to have fallen on deaf ears. The team’s first callout of 2021 came on New Year’s Day, when two men rang for help at 9.30pm after getting lost on Bleaklow on a visit to the B-29 crash site. “When team members reached Snake Summit, they found a vehicle with two male occupants in, which turned out to be the two that had reported themselves lost!” the Glossop team wrote. In Snowdonia, North Wales police said they had stopped and turned away several individuals who wanted to walk up Snowdon. “Many were from the north Wales area. However, some have travelled up from London and Milton Keynes. Level 4 restrictions means only essential travel,” the force tweeted. Officers also towed away a car parked on Pen y Pass, near Llanberis, after police said it had been parked unsafely on a bend in snowy conditions.