BUXTON BEGINS WITH BLACK PUDDING & BASS

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Wednesday began with a typically healthy Dereham breakfast.

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Wot, no fried bread ?

Black pudding and white pudding from Bathgate, apparently.  Charles knows how to live (B&B from £75pppn).

With no comfort breaks or flat whites we drove straight to Buxton. The slog through Lincolnshire but the A617 really is the cruellest road.

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Abandoned hope of a loo stop at Mansfield

I gave Charles an unintended detour south of Chesterfield, and promised him we’d stop to climb the crooked spire on the way back.

As we entered Buxton to the cheers of well-wishers we were only three pubs behind Paul Mudge,  Sadly our entry to our hotel car park was blocked.

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Tight squeeze to the car park

I actually saw our Beer & Pubs Forum colleague sitting outside the King’s Head. 

“Paul ! Paul ! Paul !”  I shouted in my best Alan Partridge. He ignored me.

The Landlord at the Queen’s Head, a real gem, ushered my car in to a space only a battered Aygo would have ventured.

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Solid

Clean and well-equipped rooms with decent WiFi, though well above my usual skinflint budget.

A traditional looking Peaks pub with multiple rooms catering for locals, pool teams and a wake.  I must encounter a wake once or twice a year. On the one hand you know there’ll be beer pulled at lunchtime; on the other you need to be a bit more sensitive with pictures.

No harm taking shots of the Bass livery though.

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Various pubbers called Peter and Ian met us at the bar.  The choice would have passed muster at a beer festival 40 years ago.

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Both solid and exciting

Interesting keg selection, too;

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Sadly, five pumps is about four too many, and the scores for Moonshine ranged from NBSS 2 to NBSS 2, which isn’t bad but explains why it’s rarely graced the Guide (mind, not much else has either).

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Own glass, nice head, dull

We found a space near the table football, which it seemed a bit insensitive to play with mourners round the corner.

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Great carpet

Paul either complained or eulogised about his £2.60 pint of Marston’s, I can’t remember, and someone said they nearly died when they saw Holt Bitter being sold at £3.00.

No better way to start than moaning about the price of a pint.

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Published by retiredmartin

Retired NHS, doing long walks around UK and the world to record the great bits. Focused on Good Beer Guide pubs and live music.

22 thoughts on “BUXTON BEGINS WITH BLACK PUDDING & BASS”

  2. Both Mrs PP-T and I have good intentions to ease off the sherbert for a while.
    But it was a gorgeous day here in southern Ireland and I know a spot where the sun is high enough at 3pm in early May which is also sheltered enough to enjoy a large Cuban cigar and four pints of craft beer.
    And then around 5pm there’s another pub that has a very good diddly-eye session and stocks some excellent bottled craft beer and a superb pint of Beamish.
    And at home we have several cases of cracking Argentinian DaDa wine that were delivered this week that needed exploring along with a couple of steaks.
    So today was a thoroughly enjoyable day and we’ll think about abstinence tomorrow.
    But it being a Bank Holiday I doubt we’ll think about it for long.
    I know we should.
    But life without both booze and our grown-up kids at home is too unbearable to contemplate.
    She misses them terribly and I find banter with them on WhatsApp isn’t the same.
    We’re just about clinging on really.

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      1. Agree. Rather like Summer Lightning, a cult beer you see less of nowadays. Bit strong, even for modern tastes.

        Mrs RM had it from the Coopers in Burton with her curry at the Apne last time, but it may have been the keg version which I see a bit.

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      2. Yes, but at 5.9% a vented cask of it will last for many days longer than a cask of a proper ‘session beer’.
        And the “complexity of flavours created by a six-dimensional hop experience” and resultant IBU much higher than most beers will hide changes that would be evident in a more subtle beer of the type widely appreciated when I were a lad.

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      3. Sorry, IBU lower than that but much higher than most beers.
        ( I don’t know how to edit comments )

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  4. You might have expected a eulogy where there’s a wake and so I eulogised about my £2.60 pint of Marston’s in the Kings Head.
    I was indeed earlier shocked at paying £3.10 for Holts Bitter in their Railway.
    “No better way to start than moaning about the price of a pint” – so did I forget to mention that the first-pint-today Abbot wasn’t drinking well in Tim’s Wye Bridge House ?.

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      1. I’m not sure about that..
        Living where I do I’ve been to more Bass Charrington / Bass Worthington pubs than most people but I don’t recall seeing signs like that anywhere else, and they don’t look to me to be more than about thirty years old.
        Bass never had much of a presence in Buxton but I can’t find any history of the Queen’s Head.
        Very odd.

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      2. Now I read on WhatPub “In the same family for over 40 years, the Queen’s Head ……” so we should have thought to ask whether their ‘Private’ and ‘Toilet’ signs were just cheaper than the reproduction mirrors from a factory on an industrial estate in I forget where – except that they were too busy catering for the wake that lunchtime

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