A Farewell to Skidmore's

I remember Skidmore's vividly, its braces of pheasants hung out each autumn in neat rows, their plumage adding a touch of colour to the grey stone and leaden skies.
'It's the only way with game,' someone once said to me. 'Got to be eaten high.'

Returning to Bakewell on a wet and windy evening after - can it be? - an absence of almost ten years, I am distraught to learn that Skidmore's is no more.
'Oh, they retired ages ago,' said the proprietor of a charming bookshop next to the Rutland Arms. 'There's now a clothes shop in its place.'

But the clothes shop would never define Bakewell for me the way that Skidmore's did, with its pleasant associations with lazy rambles in the Peaks, pheasants poking about the undergrowth, and the promise of pie and pudding and a pint afterwards.

Bakewell is the poorer for the loss, but at least the old original Bakewell pudding shop is still there!