Seems I forgot to include a map showing you where Crewe is earlier. So here it is, with the Blue Mugge in Leek as your reference point. Hope that helps.
Last time here I stayed in the Crewe Arms, which sadly isn’t as posh as it looks, but undercut the bargain Travelodge by a fiver.
Historically, Crewe’s renown* rests on 4 things;
- Dario Gradi
- Not being Nantwich
- Its live ribute act music scene
- More takeaways than people
On Tuesday I was looking for the Crewe Spoons to pass an hour before my train to Manchester and the Etihad.
But there isn’t one. That’s what’s happens when you don’t eat enough eggs benedicts, folks.
Luckily there’s plenty of cafes and boozers in town, including the lovely Brunswick (top) with its cheap Holts.
I really fancied unlimited flat whites, but instead had to settle for a half of Arkell’s at the first new Guide pub in several years.
In the exotic southern half of town, too, near the Morning Foods factory and next to a flash new health centre and care home.
ONLY the Good Beer Guide can give you adventures like this.
The Raven is the sort of ’60s estate pub you get in the suburbs of Peterborough, entering the GBG with a short collection of interesting beers alongside Doom Bar.
A Life After Football of a pub, in fact. I’m sure he has happy memories of the Alex.
Eight in at 4.30, including three women. All seated round the bar with regulation minimum 24cm gap.
I could have joined them at the bar, but I always feel like that’s intruding on a family gathering, and besides I like tables.
I liked the Arkell’s Gold, a cool, chewy NBSS 3+, and the banter was, inevitably, about Mark Knopfler’s guitar work on Telegraph Road. You never get Dire Straits in a rubbish pub, as BRAPA well knows.
*For the record, Crewe is a working town. I love Crewe.
retiredmartin 
You mean you didn’t go in the Hop Pole? There used to be a Spoons, but they closed it, due to redevelopment, I think.
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I put a link to the article where Spoons apologises profusely!
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Yes, the Hop Pole was undoubtedly the highlight of our Proper Day Out in Crewe and that was without Draught Bass the guest beer as it was on my more recent visit.
Is closed “due to redevelopment” Tim’s way of saying condemned ?.
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Did you know, that edible cones for ice cream had already been mentioned in French cooking books by the year eighteen twenty-five? That was when one Julien Archambault described how he could roll one, from “petites gaufres” or “little waffles”.
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Reg,
I won’t mention where she was working long ago but my wife was instructed to check each ice cream cone for mouse droppings before filling it.
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I trust, my dear Sir, that your good lady wife was diligent in following that excellent direction. Breathing dust that has come in contact with mouse excrement has been linked to hantavirus, which may lead to the potentially fatal Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome.
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Reg,
Yes, Mrs TSM has always been very diligent.
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Your blog has made me think that England has rather more, proportionally, of these “tribute act” singers than what we’ve got in the States. Do you feel that you see them advertised almost everywhere you go?
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Again, Mark, an interesting comparison I’d missed.
I think some towns in the UK have far more tribute acts than others, mainly in the larger northern pubs.
20 years ago it was Elvis and the crooners, now it’s the 90s bands (often Oasis) who can make a part-time living playing covers.
In Cambridge it’s mainly original music, bar the show tunes at the biggest venue, but the more provincial towns feed on cover bands.
Crewe is the epicentre of the cover circuit (there’s a TV documentary about it somewhere).
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Excluding, of course, all those kangaroo air force ventilator tributes.
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But has there ever been a tribute act so good that in time it has its own tribute act ?
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Arguably the current ABBA tributes owe more to Bjorn Again than ABBA.
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Who needs tribute acts?
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BRAPA.
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TSM, perhaps more than we’ll ever know. That Mr. Zimmermann said that his was a tribute to everyone from Woody Guthrie to Edith Piaf, for instance.
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Etu,
But didn’t Dylan digress too far from the music of Woody Guthrie and Edith Piaf to be a proper tribute act ?
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I’ll let others be the judge of that Paul. He was just a for instance, probably not the best, but there are many others who made a name aping others more closely, e.g. all those 1980s Doors-inspired ones.
Maybe I haven’t thought this through…
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A great estate style pub find….is camra boycotting micros for estate boozers with one cask ale on? I like this seismic shift
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Early days, but there does seem to be a bit of a comeback for low key boozers this year. It’s certainly not ALL micros and craft bars. Hoorah!
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