The Beehive Inn was built in 1864 to house the gangs laying the Buxton railway spur, and it is still the centre of the village — a family-run pub that also runs a farm shop out of the same building, open daily, selling local produce and the sort of everyday essentials you forget to bring. The landlord is Stefan Herling; his wife raises livestock. The kitchen does Sunday roasts all day, noon to nine, and a menu that recent reviewers have picked out for the sea bass, the seafood platter and the steak pie. If you want to eat cheaply there's the Menu Rapide set lunch: one course £8.95, two for £10.95, three for £12.95. There are plenty of vegan options and a house ale called Beehive Bitter. Dogs get a designated area, and in summer the beer garden fills with flowers; in winter there are log fires. The Fifty Four and Counting travel blog called it "a hidden country pub and amazing food, close to Buxton."
You reach the village down a mile-long lane off the main road, which is part of why it feels the way it does. Combs sits in a secluded green valley closed in on three sides by gritstone edges and moorland — Castle Naze, Combs Moss, Ladder Hill, with Black Edge the high point at 507 metres. The writer and farmer Crichton Porteous, who set books here, called it "self-contained in its comfortable valley," which is about right.
To the north is Combs Reservoir, separated from the village by the railway embankment that carries the Buxton-to-Stockport line. The reservoir was built in 1797, the first one dug to feed the Peak Forest Canal, and there is a shoreline footpath that loops the water and links back to the village. The Sailing Club has been out on it since 1950; you can also take lessons in canoeing, kayaking and paddle-boarding.
For higher walking, climb to Castle Naze, an Iron Age promontory hillfort at the north end of Combs Moss, defended by cliffs on two sides and a double rampart on the third. It is a Scheduled Monument, and the edge paths give you the whole valley and reservoir laid out below.
The village grew as a cotton-spinning centre in the Industrial Revolution; the mills are gone now, converted to houses or pulled down. Two things came out of Combs worth mentioning. Herbert Frood, a resident, invented the vehicle brake lining and founded Ferodo here in 1897. And in 1840 William Nightingale bought the Pyegreave property nearby — his daughter Florence and he were remembered riding through the village on horseback.
Buxton, with its spa-town Crescent and Pavilion Gardens, is twenty minutes by the A6; Chapel-en-le-Frith, the "Capital of the Peak," is minutes away. Buses serve the wider area, but this is a place where you'll want a car.
The local pronunciation rhymes Combs with "looms," though some older residents hold out for "foams." Noel and Rita Pollard have lived at Pyegreave for forty-four years.
