The Plough Inn, Derby

This is a nice rural pub in a pleasant village, situated surprisingly close to both the M1 and East Midlands airport. Entering from the car park, you pass through a nice corridor with an inlaid display case full of attractive old bottles, walls decorated with various paintings and a rack holding the day’s papers. The corridors leads you to the main bar area with the servery directly opposite. This is a nice quarry stone floored space with a pleasing traditional servery and there was a notable foreign banknote collection on the dark wood beams above the bar area, which was interesting to peruse whilst waiting for my pint. The dark beams and pillars are complimented by herringbone brickwork walls and plenty of smart, comfortable furniture, mainly to the left of the bar, including some remarkably plush looking armchairs. There is also a dartboard on this side of the room and a door to the rear leads into a snug of sorts, called the Duck Lounge – a compact, carpeted space with more austere seating options including fixed benches around the perimeter, lots of old paintings on the walls and a few interesting features such as lamps, maps and the like to draw your attention. To the left of the corridor, there is a small dining room, with exposed floorboards and two rows of formally laid tables. This room feels like a modern add-on, although I’m not entirely sure it is, and has a grandfather clock, a series of old enamel advert boards and shelves full of dusty books to distract the eye. Folding doors at the far end of the room open out to a pleasant looking little beer garden next to the car park. We stopped off here for a bite to eat one evening, and found the menu to be pretty reasonably priced, with dishes quite down-to-earth and filling. On the bar, there were five ales to pick from, albeit five fairly mainstream ones, comprising Draught Bass, Courage Directors, Marstons Pedigree, Green King Abbot Ale and of course, Sharps Doom Bar. The barman was very friendly and poured a good pint of Bass which I enjoyed with my food. It was a bit of a gamble to head out to this pub on a random midweek evening, but it definitely paid off, as we enjoyed some decent pub grub in a comfortable, relaxing environment and with some well kept beer thrown in as a bonus. I really liked the feel of this place and can imagine this would be a great little local if you lived in the area.