BRING ME SUNSHINE

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The night before the ferry to the Isle of Man, and a chance to finish my most northern Lancashire ticks, leaving just the scary ones near Matthew Lawrenson to do.

Onto Morecambe, one of our most ridiculed of resorts. Ridiculed by people who’ve never been, just like Stockport.

Morecambe

You can get a room along the new promenade at the Royal for £36 at the height of Summer (it’s all downhill from here) and enjoy views like this across to the Lakes.

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Wobbly view – Eric statue middle right
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View

AND weather that was as close to perfect as a pale Fenland boy could dream of, being five degrees cooler than in our Cambridge desert.

The Royal has slipped out of the Guide in favour of its next-door neighbour.  I don’t mind that; the King’s Arms looks like fun.  All the patio tables were taken, but a #PubMan never sits outside, does he ? (unless it’s a Cleethorpes Railway serving hatch rather than a pub).

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It’s clear that it’s not an exotic beer range that swung GBG selection for the King’s Arms.

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Exotica

Or a sausage and mash mountain for the price of the Economist.

Or the service.  My barman just stared at me wordlessly, waiting for me to guess he was ready to serve, and leaving me to thank him profusely for letting me give him money.  I guess £2.25 a pint doesn’t allow much for staff wages or training.

And, while £2.25 (yes, two pounds and twenty-five pence) for Pedi is cheap, that’s not much below the going rate for Wigan-by-the-Sea*.  My view of the golf was slightly obscured by oversized cocktail glasses, which may have affected the quality of the beer.

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Sadly, it’s only an OK Pedi (NBSS 2.5) with Spoons-like “long-pull” taste. It not only has me wishing I was paying £3.50 for it in a Belper pub, but that I’d gone for the faster-moving Doom Bar. And that’s sad.

No.  Clearly this is a reward for offering cask in a venue banging out tunes ’till 2am on a Thursday night.  I heard them all.  Tunes that make Meghan Trainor sound like Mahler.

Tunes appreciated by folk drinking cocktails in glasses bigger than my head.

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I made sure my door was locked this time.

*That’s a compliment, by the way.

 

 

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Published by retiredmartin

Retired NHS, doing long walks around UK and the world to record the great bits. Focused on Good Beer Guide pubs and live music.

36 thoughts on “BRING ME SUNSHINE”

  2. I once had a summer-long romantic liaison with a barmaid in Morecambe.I don’t remember the pub but I do recall she was of gypsy extraction and was on a break from her normal job as a topless dancer at the Moulin Rouge in Paris ( not the sort of detail you easily forget tbh ) It was wild and tempestuous like the winter weather on Morecambe Bay and doomed to failure.
    The comedian Colin Crompton once described the resort as so dull that an all-night cigarette machine was considered the only other form of entertainment than watching the traffic lights change.
    It was rundown and tatty and I rather liked the place.It was a good drinking town that attracted holidaymakers who thought Blackpool a bit louche.
    Billy Connolly and I demolished a bottle of Gordon’s gin in 20 minutes in his dressing room after a show one night.I couldn’t remember a thing for the article in the Morecambe Visitor so just made it up.He was delighted with it.And yes Visitor was spelled with an o.
    Happy days.

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    1. “the only other form of entertainment than watching the traffic lights change.”

      I’ll have you know that I’ve lived on an island for a total of seven years (two years the first time, five the second) where the only ‘traffic light’ was a flashing red light to stop traffic twice a week when the ferry arrived. 🙂

      “Billy Connolly and I demolished a bottle of Gordon’s gin in 20 minutes in his dressing room after a show one night.”

      I’m impressed. Loved him in the movie “What We Did on Our Holiday”. And from what I know of Billy, get X ounces of alcohol into him and he’d be delighted regardless. 🙂

      Cheers

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      2. Indeed.
        He gave up alcohol decades ago after encouragement from his wife because it often led to him hitting people.
        The only thing we hit was a club although it wasn’t a night for the faint-hearted.

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  3. “I guess £2.25 a pint doesn’t allow much for staff wages or training” – so that explains Tim’s venues.
    .”£2.25 (yes, two pounds and twenty-five pence) for Pedi is cheap” but that’s about what I pay in Stonegate’s Yates in Stafford except that they’d sold out last Saturday morning, a busy Friday night presumably.
    Those two young ladies definitely caught your eye.

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      1. “Mrs RM will confirm I would have been much more impressed with the coloured goldfish bowls than their carriers.”

        Yes but technically, but saying “goldfish bowls”, you could still be talking about their front bits. 😉

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  4. Are those ladies playing the game in it’s a knockout where you transfer coloured water into a bucket? Not spilling a drop by the look of it. Eddie Waring (or Cheggers and Frank Bruno) would be pleased. Was It’s a knockout a forerunner to the EU? Best picture of sausage and mash I’ve ever seen

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      1. Good point. I had the Welsh chicken curry in Aberdare this week; chicken good but the accompaniments (naan, samosas etc) all inappropriately microwaved to death. Excellent atmosphere and beer though,

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  6. I spent quite a bit of time in Morecambe as a kid in the 70s and 80s as my retired great aunt and her daughter moved there from Wigan. Although too young to drink myself, I seem to remember that my older relatives did most of their drinking in hotel bars and social clubs rather than in pubs. The film The Entertainer which were discussing before was also filmed there.

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    1. Yes, there’s plenty of hotel bars along the front, a bit like Aberystwyth in that respect. Less Proper Pubs than you might expect, compared to Southport. Mitchells had a few, Thwaites too. Not much in the way of free house.

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      1. I remember the (keg) Marine Hotel Bar was the main sea front one in Aberystwyth when I was on a Geography Field Course in 1972. Now the GBG listed Glengower, where I’ve stayed twice in recent years, is the main one and best.
        Aberystwyth always had plenty of pubs, and I only just got round them all as a sixth former in 1972, but several have closed and an increasing number are keg only. There would no doubt be less Aberystwyth pubs without the University.

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      3. Martin,
        Six years ago i reported to the late Rhys Jones about Aberystwyth as follows ;

        The Glendower always had three good beers on, typically Six Bells Flaming Glory (‘O’!) or Happy Daze, Wye Valley Butty Bach and one from Nottingham, and all the nicer they were with the ‘famous sunsets’ across the road. I’m sure that the Ship and Castle well deserves its GBG listing too. On an A Level Geography field couse forty years ago I stayed in the halls of residence next door to the Glengower and, with only the occasional day trip since, last week was my first chance to properly check out several of the town’s pubs last visited in July 1972. Not many pubs anywhere ( other than Bathams and Donnington ) have the same two cask beers on as four decades earlier but the Pier Hotel has and the Nags Head also hasn’t changed much over the years, good pints of Banks’s in both too. Downies Vaults last week was keg only, Weston Vaults was closed and with the Plough, Mill Street, and Talbot, Market Street, long gone it looks as if Banks’s presence in the town is declining. Other pubs I vaguely remember back then but think are now also closed are the Albion, Boar’s Head ( both identifyable by the pub name built into the masonry ), Blue Bell, Farmers Arms, Skinners Arms and Unicorn. As well as closures Aberystwyth has its share of name changes and I think these include Central to Salt, Cross Foxes to Mill Inn, Crystal Palace to Scholars, Prince Albert to Court Royal, Railway to Lord Beechings, Terminus to Vale of Rheidol and White Horse to Varsity, those of which I went in last week having changed considerably internally too. I remember 1972 Aberystwyth as very much a Bass Charrington’s ‘Welsh Brewers’ monopoly broken only by the six Banks’s pubs and the hotel bars that stocked national keg beers. Now though of course the two long established Welsh independents are in town. Felinfoel have three beers on in their Coopers Arms and the Double Dragon in Harrys was good too. Brains are up to five pubs but sadly with an emphasis on nitro-keg and just a token handpump for, for example, their IPA in the Court Royal and SA Gold in Salt, both too cold. I’ve noticed customers forming an orderly queue at the bar of Yr Hen Orsaf but maybe that’s just with me having used it earlyish in the morning – and it must be many miles to the next Wetherspoons !

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  7. “Onto Morecambe, one of our most ridiculed of resorts. ”

    Oh, alright. I shall cease and desist with the ‘wise’ jokes. 🙂

    “(unless it’s a Cleethorpes Railway serving hatch rather than a pub).”

    I think that’s a given due to the extenuating circumstances. 🙂

    “Or a sausage and mash mountain for the price of the Economist.”

    The photo of that is actually making me quite hungry. (thumbs up)

    “slightly obscured by oversized cocktail glasses,”

    You sure those goblets weren’t just a reflection of her top? (rolls eyes)

    “Tunes that make Meghan Trainor sound like Mahler.”

    Methinks you’re starting to develop a ‘thing’ for Meghan. 😉

    “Tunes appreciated by folk drinking cocktails in glasses bigger than my head.”

    And pants that seem almost flesh-like!

    “I made sure my door was locked this time.”

    One good kick from either of those two would’ve solved that. 🙂

    Cheers

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  8. I was struck by this: “but a #PubMan never sits outside, does he?” –as I thought, hang on, Simon sometimes chooses the pub garden. Maybe the rule is that a #Pubticker need never worry about having his #Pubman credentials called into question. 😉

    “Tunes that make Meghan Trainor sound like Mahler.” –This really did make me laugh out loud!

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