Walking. Gossip. Travel.

Category: Castleton

  • Derbyshire – Castleton – Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese Inn

    Derbyshire – Castleton – Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese Inn

    This confused me a little, as a couple of miles down the road is the Good Beer Guide listed Cheshire Cheese Inn that I visited last year. This pub is in Castleton itself with the present building dating to 1660 and it has been an inn since the middle of the eighteenth century.

    There are six real ales available, but yet this pub doesn’t make it into the Good Beer Guide, which seems to be due to the high quality of other pubs in the region. Anyway, that’s a decent choice for a pub to have, although I personally thought that the balance of different beer types was slightly askew, but that might just be my own tastes.

    The service in the pub was friendly and warm, with a table being found for the four of us. There was compliance with Covid rules and the pub seemed clean and well organised. Table service is currently being offered and that worked out well, with no real wait. There was an offer for us to pay separately which went awry as the pub has a weird way of dealing with tax which the staff member couldn’t work out either, so we felt best just to pay as one round. Richard had some ridiculous double gin thing which was well over half the cost of the round, so my attempts to wean him onto beer seem to have taken a step back. But I didn’t say anything….

    The Barnsley Bitter from Acorn Brewery was better than I somehow expected, quite malty and having a decent flavour to it. The Brown Cow from Bradfield Brewery, which is relatively local as it’s from Sheffield, had the flavours of what I would call a drinkable session beer. Both beers tasted well kept and were at the appropriate temperature, all perfectly acceptable.

    I like this kind of signage, it suggests a friendly staff team and it’s informative and easy to read. Lovely last line as well of “come in and say hello, we’re ready to see and meet new faces” which is I think a well communicated welcome, I might try and use a similar version to that myself in the future.

    There were a couple of beers from Abbeydale on, which were Deception and Moonshine. I’ve only had the Daily Bread beer from them, which was the yeastiest beer I can remember having (to the point that I wasn’t entirely sure it was meant to taste like that as I’m not enough of a beer expert to know). Anyway, I’ll try some of their beers next time I’m back in the Peak District, although the Daily Bread beer has been stocked in the Plasterers in Norwich before.

    All told, I still wonder how near this inn must be to getting into the Good Beer Guide, as I thought it was catering to the needs of most real ale fans. Friendly, clean and welcoming, so all really rather lovely.

  • Camping – Day 2 (Castleton – Swiss Tap Free House)

    Camping – Day 2 (Castleton – Swiss Tap Free House)

    Our initial plan after walking Kinder was to pop into a Good Beer Guide listed pub in Castleton, but unfortunately, the centre of the town was so busy that we couldn’t park and there were queues coming out of the pubs. So, we thought we’d move on until Steve handily noted this little outlet as were driving out of the town, it’s an extension of the Swiss House B&B. All that I can say about this is that the bar opened in late 2019 and if this doesn’t appear in the next issue of the Good Beer Guide, then something has gone wrong.

    Most of the real ale range is from Jolly Boys’ Brewery, but this pleased me as it meant that there was a porter available. Refreshing and well-kept, this was a credit to the brewery which is based in Barnsley. Also pleasing was that the owners have thought about the beer selection and have a range of different styles, rather than that damn habit some places have of offering four IPAs.

    I have a habit of not holding back from effusive praise when I find a pub where customer service just flows. It would be unfair to expect every pub to manage to match the Hop & Vine in Hull, but just getting close excites me. And the service here was excellent, absolutely faultless. They had the disadvantage that we were in a group of four and went into a separate room, so perhaps they would have engaged even more if I was on my own, but the welcome seemed genuine and authentic. There was also a relaxed atmosphere in the pub, I like that element of calmness.

    We weren’t quite ready for food, as I hadn’t long forced my way through a family-sized pork-pie, but this looked like a very moderately priced menu for hot food. I suspect they’re doing the thing of offering food at low prices to encourage people to visit for drinks, or at least to stay longer for another drink. Also, there was an attempt to offer some different bar snacks, and Richard took quite a fancy to the Snyder’s Pretzel Pieces. So much so that about an hour later he ordered a large boxful of the things to arrive with him when he got home.

    Whatpub aren’t over-selling the location at the moment, the description of “a family run B&B with a bar open to non-residents offering a range of four real ales” doesn’t really inspire and delight. This place is much better than this text suggests, but perhaps it’ll get lengthened in time. I might be entirely wrong about this, but I got the impression that the B&B set up this bar because someone there likes beer, they didn’t just do it to try and be on-trend. The reviews for the B&B are also high, I got the impression that the owners want to do things properly, that was certainly evident with their bar.

    So, along with Hoppiness in Warsaw, Pułapka in Gdansk and the George & Dragon in Acton, I now have my fourth entrant into my entirely pointless and self-serving pub of the year award for 2020…. Very lovely.