None of the photos from my next two Cumbrian pubs are that exciting, way the cookie crumbles, so here’s a window from St Peter’s church in Castle Carrock. At least Mark gets an overlooked OMD single in the title.
Look closely at the right-hand panel in St Peters and you’ll see “BRAPA casteth out of the Newawrk Northgate Station“.
Two ticks walkable from Brampton station, though oddly none in Brampton itself. Its time will come.
Castle Carrock was gearing up for the annual Music on the Marr festival by banning kites
and erecting lots of tents, starting in the pub garden.
Tents and tarpaulins tend to take the gloss of a traditional pub like the Duke of Cumberland,
but there were bigger crimes against traditionalism inside.
That said, it was busy, and cheery, and professionally run. And clearly gearing up for a busy festival week, probably marred (ha !) by guest beers.
One customer had returned the Specials board and plonked it right in front of the handpumps, a cardinal sin the Landlady immediately remedied.
Everyone seemed very pleasant, so the drama quotient was low, which was still more than at the GBBF. A gentleman left his wallet on the bar and the Landlady took it over to his table, where his wife chided his carelessness.
And that was that. Even the dog didn’t lick me.
Chilled Golden Plover, as you beer experts can probably tell from the frostings on the glass,
but it was still tasty and refreshing (NBSS 3), and you can warm a glass up but not down.
A mile up the road in Talkin, the Blacksmiths Arms hadn’t got the tents but had got the trade.
I entered to the smell of OAP lunch, which I always find reassuring as I enter my own twilight years.
This had the feel of one of those casual diners between Macclesfield and Buxton propped up by the septuagenarian pound.
In the side room grandparents were entertaining their grandchildren my letting them use their mobile phones, and it was all very cheery and heartwarming.
Even the beers looked good.
But I was the only person not eating, and the only person drinking. And it showed a bit.
Look at the “lacings”.
Lunchtime drinking is dead, you know. And there’s nothing we can do about it.
retiredmartin 
If you’re retired, those are your twilight years. Yes, you’re a lucky man:)
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But if only I was an American 🇺🇸
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If you were an American, you wouldn’t be retired. Healthcare…. You would have to come up with at least 195,000 dollars to tide you over to 65. And that is if you stay reasonably healthy. Don’t knock the NHS:)
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I thought “twilight years” was defined as 64 onwards like P P-T and me. .
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Gads, it’s probably been 30 years since I heard that particular OMD track! I’d started to lose interest in them a bit by that point, though I quite liked ‘Locomotion’– was that from the same period?
Yes that sort of interior decoration seems a bit at odds with the whole idea of a pub, or indeed any sort of drinking establishment. Once you reach the point of hanging inspirational messages on the walls you’ve really lost your way!
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It was the very next track on the Junk Culture LP after Locomotion!
I don’t have a problem with furniture style as long as drinkers are welcomed, though in those sorts of places you tend to find you’re not. Inspirational messages – yuk.
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Was that the same Locomotion as Little Eva in 1962 ?
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Ah, thanks Martin.
I remember flying a kite as a ten-year-old, on a camp site at Caister. And a flush-faced gentleman approaching at a sprint up the track, knees-to-chest, arms awave…from the nearby airfield.
Tsk. How we laughed.
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Etu,
There’s no sense in going oh holiday as a youngster if you don’t come home with memories like that.
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Absolutely not, Paul, but he did persuade us to go for a flight in a single-engined Cessner, out over the sea and coast.
I was amazed, by how much of what appears on the map as water, miles out, is in fact exposed sand, bar at high tide, with basking seals etc.
It was the first time since the war, that my father, an ex-para, had flown too. It was an interesting experience, this “landing” business, he remarked as we left the plane.
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Etu,
Yes, I do like to be beside the seaside.
I’m not one for planes – maybe with seeing too many bits of them during thirty years of working for the RAF – but I like a proper boat trip such as Penzance to the Scilly isles last year and out from Lyme Regis with Mrs TSM and Miss TSM a few years ago.
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I loathe flying these days Paul, but I was quite bomb-happy as a kid, as one often was.
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