St Anne's Well, Buxton

Visited Buxton today on a cold windy day befitting its title as the highest market town in England at something around 940 feet above sea level. Weather so different from yesterday.

Buxton also styles itself as the best spa town in England although I think Bath and Harrogate and perhaps one or two other places might contest that view. Buxton may become the best in the next few years but it is a long way from it. I thought the town could make much more of its undoubted history. A good town trail with interpretation would help unlock its history which goes back to Celtic and perhaps as early as the first settlers in the UK owing to its warm spring water.

As it is the town seems to rely on a bus tour in a converted milk float, the driver of which makes a heroic attempt to tell us about the place while negotiating a slow moving vehicle around steep streets.

There are some very pleasant places of considerable interest, the pharmacy for instance and St Anne's Well, shown in the photo, and the reason for Buxton being in existence and the Dome were interesting as was the gardens and conservatory. The town museum was closed for renovations courtesy of the Heritage Lottery Fund, the famous Crescent was undergoing conversion to a luxury spa hotel and the pump room closed and also under renovation, the High Street was very run down too.

The Opera House looked interesting and we did step into the foyer but that was as far as we could go. It was open to see the auditorium on Saturdays but that's not much use if you're there a different day of the week. Buxton does have a summer festival and fringe which brings much to the town too. The town will be better when all this renovation is completed.

Al and Liz went back down south yesterday evening just for the day so we went out for a walk in the gathering gloom and were rewarded with a sunset while on top of Eccles Pike at 8.50pm. The sun dipped below a bank of cloud as it was setting. I captured it on my other camera but am unable to post owing to lack of SD drive on an iPad.