We’re off to Cranborne Chase tomorrow for our annual non-Guardian reader music festival. Four hours, heavy traffic, avoid the Novichok, says Google Maps.
Who knows what the WiFi will be like this year? You may be lucky to get more than a picture of Mrs RM in a field with a peacock and a pint of Beavertown.
I need to bring you up to speed with my two days completing Lancashire before I go.
First up is the Red Lion in Rawtenstall, a town close to Bury but where I doubt you’ll find a pub without a Burnley scarf in it.
Lovely bit of OS there, with the Red Lion in the middle. I wouldn’t normally devote a post to a flying visit to a plain pub, except for two things;
- The exceptional welcome.
- The variety of headings this could be stuck under (Rossendale, Rawtenstall, Higher Cloughfold, Newchurch); there’ll be loads of this geographical fluidity in GBG19.
Lovely stone pub near the church.
And those hilly things we don’t get in the Fens visible from the Stella garden.
I walked in, greeted by a booming “Hello there !” from two genteel ladies in the corner. So rare is this, I actually assumed one of them was the Landlady.
“Hello there ! How ya doing ?” No, the lady behind the bar was the Landlady, silly RM.
She’d just poured the Blonde Witch for Bloke At The Bar, which made my choice easier.
The Landlady was trying to get the telly to work, but not in the “switching the coathanger to get the Premiership via Moldova” sense. Racing from Aintree, or something.
I found out more about Rottenstall (that’s how you pronounce it) in 15 minutes than you would in an hour on Wikipedia. Higher Cloughfold is the posh bit of town, it’s a friendly place, Burnley will smash Watford. That sort of stuff.
She was great. I only wish she hadn’t outed me as CAMRA and told me she had two more handpumps round the corner.
The Moorhouses was plenty; cool, creamy and with top lacings (NBSS 3/3.5).
The music stretched from Ball of Confusion to, er, the Wheelbarrow Song, possibly the first pub outing for the Notts County anthem. Weird.
A Proper Pub, and a good GBG pick. A quick look at WhatPub suggests I may be back in town quickly for less traditional ticks. Look at these;
- Bees Knees
- Northern Whisper Bar
- Hop Micro Pub
- Blind Tiger
- Casked
and that’s not counting the Temperance Bar which we’ll all be heading to now the Government has set safe limits at zero.
So was the “booming “Hello there !” from two genteel ladies in the corner” the heartiest welcome you’ve had from two young ladies since the two young ladies in Morcambe ?
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Ho Ho Ho.
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When’s the last time customers randomly said “Hello” as you entered a pub, even before you got to the bar ?
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Yes, I was wrong about Morcambe and agree a welcome from other customers is unusual.
it’s most likely in proper old pubs, such as the Haberdashers Arms at Knighton and Anchor at High Offley, with rooms no bigger than in our own houses.
Micropubs are often not much bigger but few are welcoming as most of their customers are far more interested in the grapefruit murk than other human beings.
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I can imagine a welcome in those two. Staffordshire as a whole has pleasant people in pubs.
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Can’t remember exactly when, but he turned out to be a nutter.
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Are we talking about the Temperance man ?
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Disappointed with the first map, shows Basingstoke but not Hartley Wintney, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartley_Wintney
How weird!
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Sorry, that was poor joke.
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Funny how the mind works, but seeing the name “Rawtenstall” brought back vague memories of a song I heard at a folk club back in the mid 1970’s, during my student days in Salford.
Youtube,as ever, came up trumps. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIONPXg_W8g
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Loving the Notts County reference – great football trivia knowledge!!! That bloke’s pint looks absolutely magnificent
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Should have added a video of the Wheelbarrow song for Russ, Dick & Dave’s benefit !
Northern pints look the best 😉
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“You may be lucky to get more than a picture of Mrs RM in a field with a peacock and a pint of Beavertown.”
I am wisely deciding not to comment on that. 😉
“Lovely bit of OS there, ”
I was going to remark on Whitewell Bottom but again, am wisely deciding not to comment.
“Summer has ended”
That looks almost like someone’s backyard.
“Higher Cloughfold is the posh bit of town,”
Makes sense. Middle class will live in plain old Cloughfold while we won’t comment who lives in Lower Cloughfold.
“and that’s not counting the Temperance Bar which we’ll all be heading to now the Government has set safe limits at zero.”
Whatever would we do without government?*
* – I notice I didn’t say ‘good government’ 🙂
Cheers
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I was tickled when the actress Jane Horrocks went back to her home town a few years back for the BBC series Who Do Yo think You Are? that while she obviously as a local pronounced it correctly as Rottenstall, the rather psoh woman doing the voiceover insisted on calling it Raw-ten-stall.
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– and to think that it’s us paying the license fee that keeps rather posh women in their jobs mispronouncing proper place names.
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