Peak District Cafes and Tearooms That I've Visited

This is a re-writing and an update of an earlier post.

ASHFORD-IN-THE-WATER - Aisseford Tearooms. Lovely tearooms in one of the Peak District's prettiest and most popular villages. A pleassant walk along the river from Bakewell.

BAMFORD/SHATTON - The cafe at the Hope Valley Garden Centre. Usually not too busy.

BASLOW - Cafe on the Green. The best Bakewell pudding I've ever tasted.

BUXTON - Pavilion Gardens Cafe. I've had afternoon tea here a couple of times with Siobhan, one of my support workers. Very classy; most of the customers are middle aged and middle class.

CALTON LEES - The cafe inside the Chatsworth Garden Centre. Plenty of space and plenty of food options to choose from.

CASTLETON - 1530 Restaurant. This building dates from the sixteenth century. I had a lovely fish pie sitting outside in the garden.

CHATSWORTH HOUSE - The cafe wasn't as expensive as I feared it might be.

EDALE - Cooper's Cafe. All that I can say is that it's better than the other cafe in the village...by the look of its menu anyhow.

EDENSOR - Tea Cottage. A lovely spot in one of the Peak District's pretty, and more unusual villages. Not a lot of parking though.

EYAM - Cafe on the Green. I had the best lime marmalade I've ever tasted.

       Eyam Tearooms. Located in a former pub. A large selection of ice cream. Plenty of room inside.

FORGE DAM - A scenic location in the Porter Valley, a few miles from Sheffield City Centre. Based in a former scout hut. Jarvis Cocker wrote some  of his songs for Pulp here.

GRINDLEFORD - Old Station Cafe. Very large portions served here. Eccentric owners; look out for the quirky handwritten notes everywhere. I know for certain that there's a real log fire here.

HATHERSAGE - Cintra's Tearooms is one of my favourite places in the Peak District. Lovely garden, and like several other cafes, there are paintings on the walls for sale.

HOPE - Old Hall Tearooms. Part of the Old Hall pub. My first choice for food in the village. I've visited two of the other three cafes in Hope, but they are now under new management. The cafe on Edale Road is very popular with cyclists, and the other establishment has only just re-opened after a major refurbishment.

LITTLE LONGSTONE - 'The Hollow' Delightful: The place to go if you want to feel that you're part of the country set...or even the aristocracy. I needed to ring a hand bell for service. It was raining during my visit, but there's a lovely, large garden to sit in.

LONGSHAW ESTATE - The cafe here specialises in its 'soup of the day.'

LOW BRADFIELD - The Old Post Office shop and cafe. Small and cramped, but a hive of the local community. Shop, cafe, take away, community library and newsagent's. Run by a very enthusiastic young couple - brother and sister I think.

MATLOCK - The cafe in Hall Leys Park. Nothing remarkable.

MONSAL HEAD - Hobb's Cafe. It was made obvious to me that the staff preferred it that I sit outside.

RIVELIN VALLEY - Cafe in the park run by the 'Pudding Ladies.' Savoury dishes are also available.

Thurnscoe, Billingley, Highgate, Bolton-on-Dearne, and Conisbrough

My mum died last week and naturally I've been spending a lot of time with the family. This morning was no exception; I stayed with my dad in Thurnscoe for about an hour before setting off on a walk back towards Doncaster...seeing how far I'd get before the bad weather set in.

The church of St.Helen's at Thurnscoe mainly dates from the eighteenth century, but could easily pass as mediaeval though I suppose.

It's only about a mile across the fields to Billingley; en route I found three brightly coloured balloons tied together. It looks like they were released to commemorate the centenary of the opening of the Skoghalls Bridge in Sweden.

I passed the Christmas tree farm as I left Billingley and headed down the lane to the main trunk road at the bottom of the hill.  I turned left and then took the first footpath on my right, heading to the south across the field. After about a hundred yards my way was blocked by impenetrable scrub, bushes, a fence, and a ditch. I had to return to the road and remain walking on tarmac all the way to Bolton-on-Dearne.

The church here is genuinely old though.

I walked past the railway station and along the track the leads to Adwick Washlands Nature Reserve and at the earliest opportunity got up on to the top of the levee and followed the course of the River Dearne downstream.

I passed several dog walkers, one elderly couple in particular though were memorable - the woman was having fun throwing a dildo for their dog to catch and retrieve.

Not long after passing Pastures Road it started to rain, nothing too heavy, but it was very dark and threatened worse and so I finished the walk a mile and a half later at Conisbrough.

Barnby Dun, Thorpe in Balne, Almholme, and Arksey

The church and the nearby buildings at Barnby Dun are quite attractive, but that isn't the case for the rest of the village - it's not particularly unattractive, there's just a lot of bland new housing.

I left the village by walking over the lift bridge over the canal and took the road which leads to Thorpe in Balne, passing over the river and a level crossing, and walking by the derelict site of the recently demolished Thorpe Marsh Power Station.

I didn't reach my first footpath until I had passed through Thorpe in Balne; there was far too much roadwalking for my liking today. This  path went down a pleasant wooded track and then straight across a field, directly under an electricity pylon to meet the East Coast Mainline railway line, where there was a pedestrian crossing.

My map is a few years old and doesn't show the new North Doncaster Chord railway line. So...I wasn't sure if there would be a crossing - well there was, but it was a few hundred yards to the north at Haywood Junction where the chord joins the Askern Branch Line.

A few minutes later I picked up the original course of the footpath again just before reaching Owston Grange.

For some reason the next section of my walk was along a slightly overgrown concrete roadway through Owston Wood which is now used by the TransPennine Trail; I was studying the landscape as I was walking and have just had a more detailed look at the map but I can't work out why this should be - maybe at one time it was a private road leading to the grange.

I crossed over the same railway that I encountered earlier, just after leaving Barnby Dun, and then passed through a short tunnel under an abandoned railway line. There are a lot of railway lines in this area...it can get very confusing working out which is which.

I then needed to walk along a rather muddy and overgrown path until I reached my next crossing, over the east Coast Coast Mainline again, at a location called Masserella's Crossing. I needed to get permission from the signalman first though - I just opened the steel box and picked up the phone.

The approach to Thorpe Marsh Nature Reserve from the west is lovely; lowland pasture and mature woodland. It's not as attractive as you approach the road at Norwood Gate though.

I got drenched by a heavy shower as I walked down the road and then across the fields to Almholme, before re-joining the road to Arksey where I'd got plenty of time to take some photographs and pop in to the Old School Tearooms for a pot of tea and an apple crumble pie with ice cream. It's a lovely spot  and the price was very reasonable. I was confused though by the combined teapot and cup, less so by the combination fork, spoon, and knife which I ate my dessert with.

Totley Bus Terminus to Baslow

For a change today, and hopefully to arrive as early as possible at Bakewell to catch an onward bus, I stayed on the train until it reached Dore and Totley station; this is one of the few services from Doncaster that stops there. My original plan was then to pick up the Bakewell bus [I'd not be able to make the connection in the city centre]...but the first bus of the day wasn't due for another thirty minutes. I noticed that a local bus would arrive in three minutes and so waited for that, assuming it would be going all the way to the terminus, right on the edge of the moors. I was wrong though; after about half a mile it turned up a housing estate and the driver told me he was then heading off in a different direction. So I got off at the next stop and walked back down to the main road. At the first bus stop I checked when the next number 97 was due; it was another fifteen minutes and so I continued walking...to a few hundred yards beyond the parade of shops at Totley.

It was quite sunny when I got off the bus at the terminus and so I walked straight up to the picnic site and had a bit of breakfast and studied my map to plan an alternative walk.

From here it's only a few hundred yards to the county boundary. The first thing I had to do when I reached Derbyshire was to make some loud random animal noises and move my arms about to scare some cows out of my way which were blocking a stile. A couple of fields later and more livestock was in the way, this time a rather handsome horse which I had to entice to move from the gate by banging a rock on the wall.

I had several more grassy fields to cross until I reached the road, Moorwood Lane. I then needed to walk along another road for a short while - the views from here were very nice.

I found the footpath that leads to Horsleygate Hall.

Along this stretch, in a field next to the footpath I noticed at least two dozen beagles being exercised by a man. A few minutes later I caught up with him and he told me that he and his colleagues were exercising sixty hounds in the nearby fields; the dogs were all very well behaved though- none of them came anywhere near me.

It was then another short walk along a road before a steady climb up through woodland to the main Baslow road and then on to the access land on Big Moor. As expected the crossing of the moor was quite slow and tiring, the tufted grass, bracken and peat bog each presenting its own challenges.

The Highland cattle were in their usual spot as I took the path that leads past Wellington's Monument.

At the top of the paved section of the lane that goes down to Baslow there's a 'Restricted Byway' sign; I don't think the locals want anyone driving a vehicle up there though.

I arrived at Baslow Nether End just in time to catch the 2:15 bus back to Sheffield. This was a bit earlier than I had planned - but it meant that I got back home in Doncaster before the shops closed.

Preparing For A Walk

Because I usually leave the house quite early to get to the railway station on time I need to do most of my preparations for the walk the day before.

My usual procedure:

Using online mapping I choose my walk. If it's not in an area which is covered by my Ordnance Survey maps I'll then need to print off a copy.

As late as I'm able to do I check the weather forecast. This is usually by watching the weather forecast on TV or going to a suitable website. I don't have an internet capable mobile phone and so rely on my desktop computer; I usually don't have time to boot it up on the morning of a walk though.

If I can use my maps I need to fold them to the correct configuration; not as easy as it might seem...I've actually pulled a muscle doing this.

Prepare my sandwiches, although quite often, especially when it's a last minute decision to go walking, I will buy sandwiches, or sausage rolls, or maybe a pork pie, from the shop.

Fill up my water bottles - it's never water though; usually still orange or diet cola of some description; on cold winter days I might take some soup or rice pudding in my flask. Yet again, sometimes I might need to buy something from the shop.

Check that I know the departure times of the buses; timetables I've printed off the internet...or just written the times on a piece of paper.

Selected my boots: I have different pairs for walking in the Dark Park and the White Peak areas of the Peak District. I wear some older boots when going on local walks...I have a few pairs which I refuse to throw away.

Make sure everything is already packed in my rucksack.

Check that my camera and mobile phone are fully charged.

Have my coat or fleece hung up with what I require already placed in the pockets.

Have my tablets ready for swallowing first thing in the morning, and check that my metformin tablets for my diabetes [which I need to take with food] are tucked into my wallet. Apart from the metformin I also take vitamin D tablets, anti-diarrhoea tablets [just precautionary these days...this used to be a real problem before my diagnosis of severe vitamin D deficiency] and ranitidine as a precautionary measure against acid reflux...this too is much less of a problem since my diagnosis, and subsequently losing over six stones in weight. Sometimes I also take a multivitamin tablet and a tablet for my hayfever.

So...everything else being fine I'm ready to set off for my walk. Of course there are still many things that can go wrong, and have done so.