STANLEY ROAD

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Greetings from the cheap Travelodge in Brighton, where I’ve just completed the East Sussex GBG chapter in fine style.  But I’m still not paying £4 for internet, so this is a short post.

Walk

You left me at the top of Bootle, in need of a comfort break and a flat white.

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Ah, here’s an attractive looking Wetherspons, just in time.

“I have seen wild roses growing on the very ground which is now the centre of Bootle.” William Gladstone

No, can’t see it either.

One of two former GBG Spoons in Bootle, this was as cheery as ever, though the glass return area tells you what folk were drinking at 10.30am on Sunday.  Not cask, then.

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Fun times

The other Guide entry this century is a design classic.

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Cat & Fiddle in there somewhere

I’m not making fun of Bootle, by the way. I walked Haywards Heath High Street today and it was total rubbish; Bootle is better by far, spick and span and with useful shops,

It all goes to pot as Stanley Road enters Kirkdale, though,  A delight for fans of dead Tetley pubs, less so for the walker.

WhatPub shows the cask coverage in painstaking detail.

pool
Yep, just one Spoons

Shame, these looked great pre-match venues.

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Not a pub, I think
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Definitely dead
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Future micro

The Eagle Vaults survives, with a full write-up on WhatPub.

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After you

Just as the shining lights of Liverpool loomed into view, the pavement ran out. They don’t expect pedestrians north of the centre.Faced with a walk into the Mersey Tunnel or a walk along the middle of the A59, I chose the latter.

And suddenly the scary Liverpool was behind me, and I was in the glossy museum quarter.

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But not for long.

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.

31 thoughts on “STANLEY ROAD”

  1. I know that Travelodge well.Used to stay there when visiting the eldest at Uni.
    There’s a pub down the road that sells some of that unfiltered tank lager stuff or whatever it’s meant to be.I rarely drink lager but this was top stuff.
    I quite like Brighton – nice place to visit while overnighting at Gatwick North Premier Inn – but I’m glad the eldest has moved to Bristol where he tells me everything is cheaper and he’s lined up three places to get mullahed on scrumpy when we visit and the city centre Premier Inn is less than 50 quid a night.
    But that’s for when I’m off the wagon.
    Only seven more weeks to go before I have my next drink – and it’ll be a shedload of large G&Ts on a BA flight to Mexico City.
    Then it’s two weeks of tequila.
    I bloody love tequila.
    Anyway that’s enough drink talk.

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    1. Brighton is fantastic, loads of Sunday drinking and more graffiti than Brizzle.

      We’ve stayed in the Premier Inn in Brizzle recently, the one with the giant underpass with a burrito bus. Bristol isn’t much cheaper than Brighton these days 😑

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      4. I wasn’t meaning Dark Star.
        But I do like to be beside the seaside [ though not as much as P P-T in Morecambe ] and you’ve got me thinking of June to July, three nights in Brighton for a day there and a day in Lewes.

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  2. “Greetings from the cheap Travelodge in Brighton,”

    Is there any other kind of Travelodge? 😉

    “But I’m still not paying £4 for internet, so this is a short post.”

    4 quid? Are you at a hospital? (bloody notorious for charging an arm and a leg to access the Net)

    “in need of a comfort break and a flat white.”

    That’s part of the problem; you have a flat white and then need a comfort break. 🙂

    “Fun times”

    I hope they’re not all from the same person!

    “Cat & Fiddle in there somewhere”

    Architecturally speaking that’s the equivalent of a boil on someone’s bum.

    “WhatPub shows the cask coverage in painstaking detail.”

    Yowzers.

    “Definitely dead”

    Not even 10,000 volts will do the trick. 😦

    “and I was in the glossy museum quarter.”

    Perfect place for another comfort break. 🙂

    Cheers

    PS – Yes, it’s been a bloody week over here, but it will get better (at least for me) by Wednesday. My darling wife is off up north to cater a first cousin’s fashion show, or some such. As for me, after running the lunch truck (and shopping for same) I intend on doing nothing but crack open a few beers and catch up with you lot. 🙂

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      1. “I had another view from Canada while you were away, no idea who that was 😳”

        Someone may have made use of my phone whilst I was in the loo at the local brewpub perhaps. 🙂

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      3. “They said some awful things about you in their comments, but dont worry, I deleted them.”

        Must have been foreign tourists. We Canadians are too polite to to do that. 🙂

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    2. Free Wi-Fi in UK hospitals, which I shall take full advantage of later this morning, when I attend the eye clinic for my regular six monthly check up.

      The hotel in Richmond VA, where I spent a night, back in August, wanted $9 per night to access their Wi-Fi. I turned it off on my phone settings, so as not to connect, even accidentally.

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      2. Tee hee. Just a point of order, but two out of three NHS beds have closed since 1979, despite an ageing population.

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  3. I love Liverpool and spent four happy years there. I don’t really want to go back anymore now, it’s so depressing to see what the city has become. A great city with some fantastic architecture, character and wonderful people that’s been neglected for far too long.

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      1. Very much so and it is a great pity. We walked down Dale St the last time we went, the heart of the commercial and financial sector and there were ‘To Let’ and ‘For Sale’ signs outside most of the office premises.

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      2. Richard,
        Mention of Dale Street reminds me that I would have had a pint in the Ship and Mitre eight days ago but the 10am opening suggested by WhatPub didn’t happen so I went earlier than intended to the Crown for meeting up with Martin.

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      3. Yes, the millennium boost from lottery funds helped smarten up the museums, and Liverpool One is ideal if you use shops, but elsewhere nothing appears to have changed. Crosby/Waterloo stands in sharp contrast to Bootle, of course.

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  5. I remember the Pitchpine well from my time at Tetley Walker, a very busy tenancy which at one time was targeted as a transfer to managed house. I dread to think what the weekly barrelage was at that time. All keg, from memory.

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  6. Surprised no-one has commented on the (potential) reference in your title. I know you were on the actual road in Liverpool but did you make it to the Wild Wood?

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  7. Speaking of Stanley Road, Bruce Foxton once brought me a pint in the Rats Castle in Guildford, pre Undertones gig we were both going to back in 1978, he never asked me for my autograph.

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