April 2026. Wardlow Mires. Peak District.
I’d taken Mrs RM to one of the most scenic points in the Peak District, bought her ice cream and Jaipur (NOT in the same glass, silly ! That’s a Stockton thing) and drove her home via some of the most picturesque Derbyshire Dales villages.
As we turned on to the A523 towards Eyam, I said,
“I must take you to the Three Stags Heads some day. It’s never open”.
“The door’s open now”.
And so it was, and even though I’m DES I couldn’t deny Mrs RM a look at one of the UK’s great basic pubs, up there with Pontfaen and Snargate and Maidenhead Wetherspoons.
“Are you open ?” I ask. A daft question, with a couple perched under the window, trying to find the 21st century.
But I remembered passing the door a few times since my visit 20 years ago, that 5pm opening firmly enforced.
Look ! You can see the giant key the landlady uses to lock up and keep out the tickers.
She’d opened a couple of hours early to give the place a scrub; it may be old style but it’s spotlessly clean compared to, say, the Hop Pole in Risbury.
Slippy floors in the lounge,
so we stuck to the bar,
where only Black Lurcher will do. If I hadn’t been driving I’d have had a pint and told you my views on why the Three Stags Heads (3 pint pots on the CAMRA website) isn’t in the GBG.
But the beer seemed irrelevant, compared to discussions about Barbie and the shotgun hare, our fellow imbiber’s trip from Eccleshall near Stafford, and the landlady’s (second) favourite pub in Reapsmoor.
retiredmartin 
One of the most unusual pubs I’ve ever visited. Same landlord I wonder? We had a pair of whippets on the table next to us. It was surreal. The landlord quietly read his paper in the corner. And that rabbit!
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After that “long read” I hadn’t the energy to tell you what the landlady (same one I reckon) told us. Never mind whippets, there was a horse in the pub and the regulars barely noticed it.
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