Barnby Moor

Ye Olde Bell: dogs, garden and cask ale

The beer garden at Ye Olde Bell backs onto what one TripAdvisor reviewer called an excellent area for dog walking. Another guest, in the same hotel, says they were told not to bring a dog anywhere there was carpet. A third summed the place up as pet friendly as opposed to pet tolerant.

There's a terrace bar as well as the garden, and cask ale is always on – three changing beers typically, among them Pheasantry Pale Ale and Timothy Taylor Landlord, plus the hotel's own branded pale ale. Beer blogger retiredmartin called the hotel's place in the Good Beer Guide "unexpected," rating his pint of Landlord four out of five, noting "a Northern head," at £6.90.

Food and coaching-inn history

The restaurant menu changes monthly, with a tasting menu running alongside it. Regulars single out the Yorkshire puddings and a traditional sweet trolley. One guest wrote of "roaring open fires, old architecture and charm, a hotel with history and character."

It began as a 17th-century farm and became a coaching inn on the Great North Road – the Blue Bell. George Clarke ran it from 1800 to 1842, remembered locally as "the gentleman innkeeper," with stabling for 120 horses and beds for 60 post boys. Queen Victoria stayed in 1835, and the oak-panelled Bradgate Suite is said to be haunted by the ghost of Lady Jane Grey. A fire in 1953 destroyed two wings, and the A1's opening in 1959 took the through-traffic away.

The White Horse

The other pub, the White Horse Inn, is a Grade II-listed, mid-18th-century building with dogtooth eaves and a pantile roof, standing on the old road itself. It's rated 4.5 out of 5 on TripAdvisor and ranked the best of the village's three restaurants; the steak pie, battered cod with thrice-cooked chips and Sunday roast are the dishes reviewers mention most, alongside a vegan section with jackfruit wings and vegan steak pie. Dogs are welcome, there's a beer garden, and two or three cask ales rotate through.

Towpaths, woodland and the old road

The Chesterfield Canal towpath offers a waterside route around Retford and can get busy at weekends. Drinking Pit Lane is a woodland bridleway on the Robin Hood Way. Clumber Park's lake paths and traffic-free cycle ways are about 6.5 miles from Barnby Moor in a straight line; the road journey is longer.

The village straddles what was the Great North Road, now Old London Road and the A638, near Retford; Stagecoach buses run to Worksop. Wartime flying ace Douglas Bader used to stop at the Milestone Café, once a scrapyard café on the north edge of the village, demolished in 2004, and the Grove and Rufford Foxhounds – descended from hounds the 7th Earl Fitzwilliam brought in 1912 – are still kennelled here.

Domesday roots and lives remembered

Recorded in Domesday as Barnet-Juxta-Blidas – Barnet next to Blyth – Barnby Moor had a population of 274 at the last census, one of the smallest in Nottinghamshire; its old shop, post office, smithy and church are all private houses now. Retford station, four miles off, is the nearest stop; Barnby Moor's own closed in 1949. Its best-known export might be Beatrice Tomasson, a mountaineer, born here in 1859.