Smart, good-value rooms upstairs from this 18th-century pub are let down by clumsily old-fashioned food. Good job the beer’s a winner
For those of us playing the long game by refusing to drive, getting to Pilsley, near Bakewell in the Derbyshire Dales, is a bit of a haul – train to Chesterfield, then a bus into the wilds. But sitting on the top deck of the 170 not only makes me feel confident that we non-drivers will inherit the Earth (when petrol rationing begins, our route knowledge will see us hailed as gods), it’s also the perfect spot to appreciate why people rave about the Peak District.
As the bus heads west (£2.80 rather than £20 in a taxi), the landscape scrolls through blasted moorland tops, sudden dense woodland and, then, the acres of lustrously green farmland that cover Derbyshire’s curvaceous dales. All topographic life is here. In the spring sunshine, it looks stunning.
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