Destinations

Destinations - Derby

Written by Patrick Middleton

From Reporter Issue 93

DERBY DAYS

Thinking of a break across the Channel? If you want a taste of the �real� England, Patrick Middleton recommends a few days in and around Derby.

I�ll be frank about this: what turns me off in many English cities these days is that walking down a main street you often feel you�re part of a photo shoot for a world music album sleeve. And it�s often hard to find anyone who talks with evident pride about where they live. Derby�s different. Of course, it�s got a more varied community than in the past and is in some ways richer for that, but the place and the people have in many respects retained an authentic Englishness. For a nostalgic expat or a curious foreigner, it�s an ideal destination and it�s both cheap and easy to get to with bmibaby�s daily �low-cost� flights from Nice to East Midlands Airport, just a quarter an hour�s drive from the city.

�Enthusiasm and loyalty��

So what�s Derby got to offer the visitor? Above all, a remarkably varied experience but what struck me also was the enthusiasm and loyalty of the people as they talked about their home town. On my first evening I was taken to the Derby Beer Festival where I had a choice of over a hundred real ales�including a lone French offering, Pietra, �made with Corsican chestnuts.� An eloquent local told me how the festival had grown over 25 years and had become a high point in Derby�s year. �When we decide to do something, we do it well,� he insisted. That, clearly, was something that Marion Nixon at the local tourist office wanted me to understand when she put together the programme for my stay. I spent most of one morning at the Royal Crown Derby factory seeing how that superb bone china is produced, from the treatment of the raw clay to the final decoration. Industrial visits of this kind can be dull but this was fascinating�and illuminating, too. If you�ve ever wondered why a tiny teddy bear paper-weight�a very popular item�should cost fifty quid then you�ll get the point as you see how much time, skill and detailed work goes into its making.

With a history going back to Roman times, Derby has its share of conventional sights�from its unusual cathedral to Pickford�s House, a restored Georgian town residence, but there are other places to see of a very different kind. Derby County F.C. can console itself for its recent relegation by gloating over its spanking new stadium at Pride Park, one of the UK�s finest, where soccer fantasists can emerge from the tunnel to the roar of an imaginary crowd, loll in the directors� box or even have a quick shower in the home dressing-room. There�s sporting interest of a different kind just outside the town at the Donington Grand Prix Collection. Local building tycoon Tom Wheatcroft has built up a huge collection of Formula 1 cars once driven by the greats of motor sport, from Fangio to Senna, from Moss to Mansell. Wheatcroft, I was told, drops in occasionally to go for a quick spin around the Donington track in one of these classic vehicles. This privilege isn�t accorded to visitors�

I opted for a more modest mode of transport at the wonderful Crich Tramway Village. Unlike the transport museums in York and at Clapham, this isn�t just an assemblage of old trams in a shed but the visitor gets to ride on the veteran streetcars and, with the same ticket, can do so all day. Trams disappeared from London almost exactly 50 years ago and I can just remember, as a very small and nervous Irish visitor, being terrified of falling off the open platform. But instead of travelling on an old LT model, I enjoyed half an hour�s trip on J1 which had operated in Johannesburg for nearly 60 years before being retired to Crich. Lord Curzon, a Derbyshire man, once said, �No gentleman goes on a bus,� and I�m sure he would have extended this dictum to trams. Curzon�s world of �superior persons� is still accessible in the area with its concentration of great houses, including Kedleston, Curzon�s own place, and above all Chatsworth, the vast and dazzling residence of the Devonshires, one of the sights of Europe.

�Rooted, self-confident and decent...�

On my way to Chatsworth I was able to appreciate the beauty of the Peak District landscape. This is the world�s second most visited national park. That I learned from my guide, Keith Blood, one of the best I�ve ever had. Keith is a Derbyshire man to the bone, a native of Ashbourne and is typical of the locals in his articulate but unassertive pride in the county and the city. I learned a lot. Thomas Cook was born here�and Lara Croft was conceived here. Derby has, it�s been calculated, more ghosts than any other town in England. On a more modest note, it has the country�s second best coffee house�the Grand Caf� Caruso in the Eagle Centre. But I didn�t only talk to Keith. As we moved around he introduced me to other people. Like the woman volunteer guide at the Strutt Mill in Duffield�that�s where a lot of Peak Practice was made�who recounted local history as if she had lived it herself. I felt I was getting in touch with an England that�s less and less easy to find these days. An England that�s rooted, self-confident and decent. Well, I�ll tell you: it�s alive and well and surviving in Derbyshire. n

Derby nights�

Derby has some pleasant hotels, comfortable and with very reasonable rates. I divided my time between the Midland and the European Inn. The first of these is a modernised railway hotel from the early nineteenth century�Queen Victoria spent a night there, they claim; the second is a straightforward 3-star property. Both serve an excellent buffet breakfast�though in neither case, I was sad to find, was black pudding on offer. Incidentally the Midland is offering Christmas and New Year breaks, ideal, they sound, for anyone wanting to see out the year in traditional style.