Those end-of-year highlights posts really interfere with my chronology, don’t they.
Back to the Big Northern Pre-Christmas Tick, as I leave Stockport to meet the Pubmeister in North Wales.
A quick half in Rowen in the Conwy Valley, a pleasant stroll from Bodnant Garden where you can safely leave your OAP for a couple of hours with enough cash for a latte and a pot plant.
A pleasant but uneventful stroll till you get within half a mile of the village (pop c.508).

And then an unbroken string of cars starts, leading all the way to Ty Gwyn.

The lamb shank must be pulling them in on a Saturday lunchtime, I guess.
It’s rather lovely, in that Welsh pub owned by English family brewer way.



But completely devoid of customers.
“What are all those cars doing ?”
“At a wake. Be coming down the hill in 20 minutes”
At least they hadn’t put a “CLOSED FOR PRIVATE FUNCTION” sign up in Rowen (pop. c. 507).
David Gray sang something funereal, appropriately, and I took a decent half of Lees Bitter for a tour round what looked a good village all-rounder.


The footsteps got closer; I had just enough time to admire the collection of unwoke beer mats in the loo.
BeerMat can leave Mrs BM to admire the rhododendrons in Bodnant while he snaps the Bass beauties here.

I had forgotten that the Castletown Brewery brewed some of Bass Charrington’s Jubilee Stout.
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I’d forgotten Bass did beer mats!
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Yes, and that “reserved for beer drinkers” one is probably a bit newer that the “Bass for men” ones that might have inspired Brew XI / Ten For the Men of the Midlands / North.
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Worth going just for the mats!!! Like the population decrease line!!! I’ve told Mrs BB that we are going walking in Wales as our exotic holiday in the summer…
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