Wednesday means wandering, and a withering retiredmartin made it to Wetherby* in 2:30 hours before needing a “comfort break”.
Wetherby hasn’t given me any new GBG ticks for a decade. And, like 99.7% of the other problems in the world today, that’s all the fault of Leeds.
Not just the damned United version, either.
As Richard was always keen to remind me, Wetherby is a part of Leeds, which has gobbled up the Guide allocations of its little cousins to the west. Has Boston Spa EVER had a GBG entry ?**
But the town has charm, and a car park called “The Cluster of Nuts“,
and a Marks & Spencer food store with discounted deli bits, and a Sam Smiths pub I’d have finally nipped in for a half it had been open,
and one of the finest riverfronts anywhere just off the A1.
Leave the toddlers to their splashing and ’99s by the bridge and walk along the Wharfe to the unexpected rocks and drama of the A58 flyover, where in 2011 two lads forlornly chased a plastic football (bought 3 hours previously in Blyth) that evaded them and ended up in the North Sea.
Somewhere round here you’ll spy the iconic Brain Licker bottles (top) bought on the Spanish black market by Leeds ravers in the ’90s.
Back in town, I did the Heritage Tour.
We stayed here, once, in 1994. The lovely Don and Joan, in their ’60s, provided B & excellent B for £32 to tempt away folk who couldn’t afford the posher Swan & Talbot.
The pubs round here looked solid and workmanlike, and it’s probably no surprise that Muse/Mews/Moos has dallied with the Guide this century.
Stop awhile and rest your weary legs, and buy rare boiled sweets at The Candy Shop, whose Army & Naval herbal sweets have not gone down particularly well with Mrs RM on our journey back from Ellesmere this morning.
But then Mrs RM doesn’t have to take cough candy to dull the taste of homebrew, does she ?
*Courtesy of Alluring Alliteration Association Ltd.
**Joking, of course. Leeds just has the best beer.
retiredmartin 
Your mention of Army & Navy cough sweets (excellent) got me brooding over other traditional British delights. I’m still investigating the possibility of getting Uncle Joe’s Mintballs in Shetland but Henderson’s Relish seems to be an impossibility unless I am prepared to pay postage of £11.99 for something that costs £2.38. Which I’m not.
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I’d bring you some up, Bill, but suspect that the fences will be going up on Hadrian’s Wall soon to keep the plague out.
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There are ways around. We don’t all do what St Nicola tells us, y’know (or du keens as we say in Shetland)
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I though “Wetherby is a part of Leeds” was like saying Stockport is a part of Manchester but I’m not qualified to comment on t’north.
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Or Stafford is a part of Stoke.
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Then it would be Stokeshire but it’s not.
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To think ,I lived about 15 mins away from Wetherby for 40 years & I only went a couple of times to the river so the pictures of the “town ” were interesting for me ..I think when we were younger there just wasn’t anything of interest for us -perhaps there were no Tetley pubs which were our youthful favourites ? I don’t know !
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Odd the lack of Tetley pubs, isn’t it. There’s certainly Tets there.
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The Wharfdale Brewery in Wetherby, which might have owned most pubs in Wetherby, was acquired by Braime’s Tadcaster Brewery in 1903 with their pubs going to the Leeds City Brewery several years later.
I think the Leeds City Brewery was acquired by ind Coope in about 1930 and what I find odd is that the pubs apparently weren’t rebranded Tetleys after the formation of Allied Breweries about thirty years later.
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Over here the Cluster of Nuts is much bigger than a parking lot.
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328 million people at last count, yeah?
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