Today’s retiredmartin cover star, who hasn’t quite mastered the bemused look, is Mrs RM, modelling my Real Women Drink Gallons theme in the Vault in Ellesmere.
She nicked my photo and converted it to her Facebook header within minutes, attracting a record 27.5 likes. Failure to like Facebook posts is a criminal offence in Waterbeach.
NB Please DON’T caption the photo, folks.
We arrived along the Mere after dropping Matt and the lovely Emma (the one whose parents have Joy Division oven gloves) off at Stoke station.
Excitingly, the journey takes you into a foreign country as you leave Whitchurch, but only for a few nervy moment before you emerge, breathlessly, in Welshampton.
Which sounds like it should BE in Wales. Anyone ever stopped in a pub there ?
Mrs RM has asked me not to let you know that she thought we were heading for an industrial Cheshire town on the Mersey.
We parked alongside the Mere (FREE ! FREE ! FREE !) and the swans came to say hello.
It was 7.30pm and needed broccoli or similar, but I needed my last Shropshire tick (on the basis no-one knows when Ludlow’s Blood Bay is reopening).
You’d need a better memory than me to recall my last trip to Ellesmere., when I came here in error and enjoyed its “er” charms.
Canal king Pete Allen is probably your Ellesmere Expert.
I’d attempted to tick the Vault on the way to Wrexham this year, but micro hours defeated me. I expected something like the Gravesend place,
but what you get is more akin to a themed Isle of Wight bistro with tat turned up to ten.
Youngsters drinking on tables outside, cocktail mums on high tables below. I loved it.
The real ales seemed inconsequential.
Mrs RM found the table furthest away from the action and with the worst WiFi.
We drank pints of Three Tuns (NBSS 2.5+) and Stonehouse Sunlander (NBSS 3.5+) and looked at our culinary options.
Unbelievably, the Thai place was closed. Well, it was 8pm on a Friday. So Pizza in the Vault it was.
There was so much left we stuck in the campervan fridge and it fed James all of Sunday.
A second Sunlander came in a Brains glass and was even better, so go figure.
My notes, as you’re tired of hearing, are long lost, so you’ll have to guess what music they were playing. Matching the mixed crowd, it went from Deep House to Deap Valley, which is the most obscure musical reference in my blog this month. So far.
retiredmartin 
It’s not unusual to confuse Ellesmere and Ellesmere Port, and having visited the latter on a canal boat holiday, in the dim and distant past, I know which one I prefer. I’m sure most people would agree with me.
I also remember an earlier visit to Ellesmere, back in the mid 1970’s. That was as part of a botany field trip, whilst at uni. I vaguely remember finding a pub selling Border Ales, but have no idea which one it was or how many pubs that Wrexham brewery had in the town.
Perhaps Stafford Paul could confirm?
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T’other Paul.
Border Ales in Ellesmere would probably mean in the Black Lion, Market Street, Cambrian inn, Victoria Street or White Hart, Birch Road.
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T’other Paul.
1970s field trips aren’t easily forgotten.
There a letter in this month’s What’s Brewing about the lack of Draught Bass on a 1972 Geography field course in Aberystwyth.
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A young Martin had been on a school trip the day before.
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“after dropping Matt and the lovely Emma off at Stoke station” – any excuse for a pint of Titanic Plum Porter. .
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Bod was shut, Paul, or we’d have done just that 😉
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Oh no, there’s only there and the Coachmakers ‘Up ‘Anley’ worth going to the Potteries for.
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Pontcysyllte is easier to pronounce if it is spelt correctly. (Sorry, couldn’t suppress my normally quiescent inner pedant. Feel free to ignore me in the street by way of punishment next time you see me before I see you.)
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That was intentional, of course 😉
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Just remember it’s an anagram of “plenty costly” and you won’t go far wrong.
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Great advice as always, Paul.
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Hey, that’s a cracker 👍
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Never been to Ellesmere although they gave an independent school which is my boring but true fact for this post. The beer looks good, the pub even better but the pizza looks sensational
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Is there a direct correlation between women getting to know you and them then starting to drink gallons?
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Scott,
Is that “know” in the biblical sense ?
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Gallons, not Hogsheads.
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