Tideswell

This is actually quite a rare thing, we have actually managed to get away a couple of times this year, this time for a 50th brithday weekend, staying in a bunkhouse in Derbyshire.

I love the Derbyshire Peaks. It’s somwhere I don’t get to go too often, but it is somewhere I have always found very beautiful – I love my Yorkshire Pennines, but the lower end of the range has always felt a little more grean and soft, for all it’s ruggedness.

We got to the barn in the early evening on the Friday, to torential rain, and this led to an evening of food, schnapps and music. But on Saturday we paid a visit to Tideswell, the nearest village.

We started a little outside the village and walked in through this lovely limestone countryside. This is going be be re-interpreted in watercolours soon.

Tideswell itself is a lovely little village of about 1800 people. There’s not many shops, though for me a big attraction is Peak Volumes – a large second hand book shop which is like a rabbit warren inside. I picked up a 1906 Volume on the History of British Watercolours, and 3 railway books for £12 which strikes me as pretty good. There’s a good butchers and greengrocers and a wool and yarn shop.

We had battered black pudding and chips from Elliots, which was excellent (and received plenty of infomation on how they were the best and that fish and chips in Hathersedge are crap and overpriced). There’s also a number of pubs. We went to The George. There’s a Co-Op for more mundane things.

We visited the 13th century church. I think my only complaint about the village is that there were too many parked cars for good shots of the 16th-17th century stone houses, and that by all acounts the local Male Voice Choir allowed Edwina Currie to be their president at some point…