The Grindleford Station Cafe occupies the old railway station buildings, right beside the western mouth of Totley Tunnel, and it has been in the same family since 1973. It trades in hearty breakfasts and king-sized chip butties, which TripAdvisor reviewers have called the best in the world. The late Phil Eastwood, who ran it for years, was known for his officious hand-painted signs, one of which read "When vegetarians walk in you know there's going to be trouble." He let skint climbers sleep in the cafe and would swap a chip butty for a turn at the sink.
The tunnel behind it runs 6,320 yards, long claimed as the longest wholly-inland rail tunnel in the country. Trains on the Hope Valley Line reach Sheffield in about fourteen minutes.
Grindleford sits in a natural amphitheatre of wooded hills — Froggatt Edge to the east, Sir William Hill to the west, the River Derwent running north through the middle. Arriving from Sheffield, you come over Fox House, drop down the hill, and cross the triple-arched Grindleford Bridge over the water.
There are two places to stay and drink. The Maynard is a boutique country hotel of nineteen rooms, built in 1908 and named for the Maynard family, Lords of the Manor of Padley, whose line reportedly runs back to Agincourt. It does breakfast daily, Sunday roasts alongside the main menu, and afternoon tea by a day's notice. The garden hosts live music every Sunday in May. Past guests are said to have included Shirley Bassey, Paul McCartney, and Don Bradman's 1938 Australian cricket team.
The Sir William Hotel has been a pub for around 150 years, put together from three cottages on the green. Its garden terrace looks over Froggatt Edge and the Hope Valley, and it keeps real ales the CAMRA sort will find listed. The manager, Helen Bedford, says: "This is a much friendlier place than Arundel where we used to live and work. People here have a great community spirit."
The traditional village shop closed, so volunteers opened a community shop in its place, selling local produce.
The walking is the main draw. From the station, a six-and-a-half-kilometre circular climbs Burbage Brook up through Padley Gorge — oak woodland, waterfalls, heather moorland above a thousand feet — and returns through Yarncliff Wood. It is National Trust land in most directions. Longshaw Estate, with a visitor centre in an old shooting lodge and tea rooms, is just up the hill; the gorge itself is an easy family walk, with paddling in the brook.
Padley Chapel, the surviving gatehouse of a vanished hall, is where two Catholic priests, Nicholas Garlick and Robert Ludlam, were arrested in July 1588. They were convicted of treason and hanged, drawn and quartered at Derby within the fortnight. An annual pilgrimage still marks the Padley Martyrs.
Grindleford was never a Domesday manor. The parish was stitched together from the hamlets of Stoke, Eyam Woodlands, and Upper and Nether Padley, and the name first appears in a charter of 1248 as "Grundelford." The railway arriving in 1894 roughly doubled the population over the following century.
Each March the village stages the Grindleford Gallop, a twenty-one-mile off-road challenge that began as a fundraiser for the primary school. It sells out fast, and is known chiefly for its cake.
