Hoover and I popped to The Peak District in November and spent three nights at the warm and cosy Pine Door Cottage in Eyam, Derbyshire on our way back down south after our holiday in Northumberland. I had always wanted to visit this part of the country as I had heard it was stunning, and I wasn’t disappointed. After a bit of online research we found a cottage called Pine Door in the pretty village of Eyam. (map)
Eyam (pronouced ‘eem’) is a quintessential Derbyshire Dales village that sits within the Derbyshire Peak National Park. It is full of history: Nearly 350 years ago the community of Eyam made the ultimate sacrifice to prevent the spread of the Black Death of 1665 – their own lives. An outbreak of the plague was contained when the villagers decided to isolate themselves from the surrounding communities. It is also known that some of the villagers were genetically unique and naturally immune to the plague. Some of their direct descendants still live in the village.
The village has all the amenities you would expect such as a village shop, post office and traditional pub. Chatsworth and Haddon Hall country houses lie are around 25 minutes away by car. The 
village is perfectly placed to visit many of the more well-known natural landmarks such as Curbar Edge, Monsal Head, and Surprise View to name a few. It is also home Eyam Tea Rooms and Bed & Breakfast, the best tea shop for miles (in our humble opinion).
Pine Door is perfectly located in the heart of the village, (streetview) just a few doors up from the pub, and across the street from the (very doggy friendly) tea rooms. Pete Denver, the owner of Pine Door, gave us the warmest of welcomes, rushing out to meet Hoover and help with my gear. The cottage has everything you need to have a comfy stay, log burner, central heating, dishwasher, wi-fi, etc, etc.
Perhaps rather unsurprisingly a pine front door takes you straight into a roomy and characterful sitting/dining room with exposed beams, flagstone flooring, and a welcoming log burning stove in a
traditional stone fireplace. There is a separate galley style kitchen, which has everything you need. In fact it was brand new and I was the first person to use it.
Upstairs there is a master bedroom with a double bed and a second bedroom with two single beds and an original stone fireplace. The bed I used was super-comfy and I slept like a log here…which I struggle to do anywhere! The bedrooms share a recently installed, immaculate, modern family bathroom, which has a large walk-in shower.
As I said, Pete welcomed us warmly: he ran round to the pub to see if I could take Hoover in for supper (I could), showed me how everything in the cottage worked, and told me about some lovely local walks. In fact when we got back to the cottage the next day after our day out we found that Peter had drawn us a map of the walks he had described to us and had driven over from the next village where he lives to pop it through our letter box. What a lovely chap.
Three days was by no means long enough for us as we have fallen in love with the Peak District, and we shall most definitely return…and when we do we’ll be looking to stay at Pine Door Cottage again. The details of the cottage can be found on several cottage websites (holidaycottages.co.uk) (peakcottages.co.uk), however you may like to call Peter direct as you may get a more favourable rate. His number is: 07719 518832. Just tell him that Hoover Page recommend the cottage to you!
