A Day Out in Derbyshire - part 1: Bakewell and Rowland

Our little outing to go and see North Lees Hall turned into a big sightseeing tour of Derbyshire, from which we managed to return unscathed. Not that rural Derbyshire is full of crooks (like, for instance, the fictional county of Midsomer - where you're either a murder victim, witness, suspect or an actual murderer), but rather because it's full of very steep hills and very narrow roads. You might say north Derbyshire is breathtaking ... for all the wrong reasons!

Bakewell

We began the tour in Bakewell (passing Haddon Hall on the way). Bakewell is a town famous for their eponymous tarts and puddings, which are more or less full of almonds. I have made Bakewell tarts before and last week, I also tried making a Bakewell pudding, following the Hairy Bikers' recipe. Now we were back, to check out the original stuff. We did just that before we went to Haddon Hall last summer, and now we were trying to find the same place. Having just got ourselves a nice pasty each, the rain came out, so we ducked into the first pudding café we found. We thought it was different from last time, and "wasn't it on the high street?" but we thought no, it has to be the same place, surely. Surely not. The Bakewell pudding wasn't as nice as we remembered it, and while they made very nice (and expensive) mochas, it just wasn't what we expected. Turned out, of course, that we had gone in the wrong place (the wrong place not having a lock on the ladies' toilet - FAIL). There indeed was a café on the high street, just around the corner, where we bought a pudding to bring home with us, and one from another place as well. (We do love the flavour of almonds!)

A Bakewell pud, which can be sent through the mail
from the Old Original Bakewell Pudding Shop site

I had driven to Bakewell, which took us very much along the same sort of rural routes as when we went home from Chatsworth the week before, but we never went down a very steep, very narrow road full of hairpin bends that meant you had absolutely NO visibility of oncoming traffic. Fortunately for me, there was none on that particular stretch, or we most likely would've had an accident. Dangeruos Derbyshire. Part one. We had no idea it was going to get worse. Much worse.

Rowland

Fortunately for me, the Squeeze took the wheel from Bakewell to Hathersage. It left me open to discover such things as a cople of pubs called The Eyre Arms and we also passed a sign for a town called Rowland. Coincidence? I have been wondering why Charlotte Brontë didn't just opt for the more common spelling "Roland" for the brother of Edward Rochester, and perhaps this is why? Rowland isn't too far from Hathersage, after all.

And funnily enough, there's a Rochester Arms pub in Jane Eyre!

The story continues in Part 2: Hathersage