Devonshire Arms - Buxton

Yesterday (Friday) l took my mum out for a drive to Buxton with the idea of seeing some of the peak district national park and getting some lunch, taking her mind off things. My sat nav gave me a lot of motorway so l kept making it recalculate taking that out. Great this brilliant insite into my lack of navigation skills put us in middle of Manchester going out via Longsite, Stockport etc. mile upon mile of traffic, people, traffic lights and stinky city.

We finally got onto the A6 and saw some green countryside as opposed to brown bricks before getting into Buxton. We had Wibble with us as it was a hot day and l figured if we could find a pub with a beer garden and dog friendly we could sit outside.

Just on the very outskirts of Buxton on the A6 we found the Devonshire Arms. It is just off the main road on north road sitting on a small green. There was some outside seating and big umbrellas and a border collie running around, so l did not need to ask if they were dog friendly.

Mum had a prawn sarnie and l pigged out on cheesy baked spud and a portion of chips. I realise artery food but l just fancied it. The food was excellent. The chips were browned and crisp not yellow and soggy as so many are. Prawns and Baked spud had a fresh salad of tomato’s, cucumber, mixed peppers in sections not those ugly big slices that annoy me so much, when you try and cut them they wave about and fresh crisp lettuce leaves.
The cheese was piled high on my spud and prawns were thickly heaped on the sandwiches, but not so high that my mum struggled to eat them.
If that was the standard of meal for their basic dishes then their main courses must have been mouth watering. I almost wish l had had a steak.
They have accommodation there and l recon if anyone was looking for a break well worth looking at.

The border collie called Holly as it turns out was very sweet, well behaved and as most BC are hyper active. She did a quick hello to Wibble but Wibs was curled up in her bed and too hot to do much other than a hello back, which was no fun so Holly darted off.

After lunch we gave Wibble a quick walk around the green so she could have a sniff then we set off back, via a different route. I decided to go back via Macclesfield. It meant more of the Derbyshire dales and avoided most of bloody Manchester.

I had forgotten it also leads up the Snake Pass The Snake Pass runs for 15 miles between Buxton and Macclesfield. A mix of fast sweeping bends and tight hairpins, and lots of motorbikes, some of the riders really shouldn’t be up there they took rather stupid chances on overtakes and speed. On the summit is the Cat & Fiddle pub the second highest pub in the UK.
Oh and my mum was not feeling to good with the hairpin bends.

Anyway we got back in good time and got to the hospital for 19:00 visiting which of course means the doors do not open until 19:10.