The Winking Man at Upper Hulme stands on the old Leek to Buxton road with the exposed certainty of a pub that came into being through practical need, not decoration, because on this high route weather, distance, stone and hunger have always shaped human movement. In summer, with sunlight across the beer garden and the wind still moving sharply over the ground, the place feels both open and protective, a roadside house made useful by generations of travellers, walkers, quarrymen, farmers, drivers and campervan wanderers passing between the Staffordshire Moorlands and the higher country beyond, where the Roaches rise with their dark gritstone edge and the road seems to carry old labour in its direction.

The physical logic of The Winking Man is easy to read once you stop and look, because the large car park, the position on Buxton Road and the wide views beyond the building all belong to a landscape shaped by movement. The Leek and Buxton road has long connected settlement, market, quarry, moorland work and upland passage, and although modern traffic now passes in cars, vans and motorhomes rather than carts or laden wagons, the underlying pattern remains the same: people still break their journeys here because the body wants warmth, food, shelter and a place where the wind can be left outside.

From the beer garden, The Winking Man does not need to announce its setting, because the landscape does that quietly. This is gritstone country, hard, weathered and resistant, and the same geology that shaped the Roaches also shaped the labour of the surrounding area, where quarrying, walling, farming and road-building depended on stone, slope and endurance. The traces are not always dramatic, but they remain in field walls, old tracks, cuttings, road edges and the stubborn lines by which people have crossed this ground for work, trade and return.

Inside, that older usefulness continues in a more hospitable form, and The Winking Man feels distinct because it treats service as a serious rural craft rather than a performance. Arriving without a booking could easily have become awkward, yet the staff were reassuring, helpful and efficient, moving busily between tables while keeping the place calm and well run. The cleanliness, order, professional friendliness and simple act of finding a table as soon as one became free all belong to the small continuity by which rural pubs survive: not through views alone, but through welcome, competence and the ability to feed people properly.

The food strengthens that impression, because a large mixed grill in this setting feels less like indulgence than a continuation of the old road-house tradition, a substantial meal for people who have walked, driven, climbed or simply been out in the upland air long enough to arrive with a real appetite. There is good value here, and a thoughtful practicality in offering smaller meals for adults with lighter appetites, while Free Damm on tap gives proper attention to those wanting an alcohol-free lager that does not feel like an afterthought.

Beyond the meal and the morning views, The Winking Man sits within a wider field of walking and memory, because the Roaches close by draw people into a landscape where geology and human use constantly overlap. Paths here have been made by repetition as much as design, by boots finding the same lines across exposed ground, by climbers approaching gritstone edges, and by local use turning access into habit. The pub therefore becomes part of the route as well as a place after it, a point of return where walkers, dogs, drivers, quiet conversations and full plates gather under one roof.

What remains after leaving The Winking Man is not only the food, the friendliness or the view, though each matters, but the sense of a pub still doing the work old roadside places were made to do, standing between movement and rest, weather and shelter, open country and human warmth. On the last Friday of every month, when Rock Night brings a louder pulse into the building, the old rhythm continues: people gather, the wind moves across Upper Hulme, the road keeps its direction, and the landscape holds the memory of all who have passed through and paused here before.