This might seem like flogging a dead horse (better than flogging a live one, tbf), but I’ve got nearly 20 useable photos, which I reckon means TWO (2) posts from Clay Cross. So don’t worry if Part 1 is a bit “pubby”, as Part 2 will clear up Cobs v Baps and recommend the best sugar-free throat sweets.
As I wrote on March 22nd, the the Three Horseshoes was always favourite for my first new GBG tick since November.
To win that £1.60 bottle of Wickwar milk stout from B & bargains, when was my last tick ?
Well, Mrs RM, Clay Cross is a dreary Chesterfield suburb. So there.
The pubs aren’t dreary though.
You can trust a pub where the bloke at the bar has a rucksack that’s bigger than your wife.
Quietly modernised, Lilley’s ciders, Jaipur and Bradfield. You get the idea.
But of course we’re shown to an outside table by a landlord I can only describe as friendly and a bit overawed by the upturn in business since Monday.
Two dozen folk across the ages at 11am on a Thursday. We pick the table with the best view and least shade, and ponder which fourteen (14 !) items to pick.
I’m even asked “Straight or handle ?”. What a daft question, like “Milk on the tea bag before or after the hot water ?*”.
Foamy beer, “We Don’t Talk Anymore ?” on the speakers, salad with the breakfast, brown sauce in a ramekin. A ramekin !
“Have Clay Cross folk ever seen salad before ?” I ask Mrs RM, at the very moment a panic stricken lad on the next table removes his leaves.
An old lady, Megan Rapinoe in 40 years time, in a pink jumper wanders past and drops her ash over the wall.
At that moment, I feel reborn. #PubsAreBack
*ALWAYS milk before hot water, fools.
retiredmartin 
“the best sugar-free throat sweets.” You really know how to keep your readers coming back.
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Other bloggers are content to tantalise you with reviews of Westerns and pictures of foaming Bass, but I know what my readers want.
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“Straight or handle ?” – for the baked beans ?
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For the coffee.
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With 14 items to choose from on the breakfast option would most people choose 2 of the 3 types of eggs or would they eliminate another choice they find distasteful? What a menu.
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That’s a very Dave question!
Never seen anyone have two types of egg, is that an American thing!
It was superb by the by.
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I’ve never seen someone mix egg types! I thought you must do that with the options presented. LOL.
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I’ve only just got your point, Dave.
14 items from a choice of 15, 3 of them egg. I want to meet the person who had that ! Perhaps they had 3 portions of black pudding ?
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I’d imagine that “double sausage” or “double fried egg” would count as two items, Dave.
Or I could be wrong again.
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Etu,
The Lost Dene does a nice double sausage.
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The only “extensive menu” I liked in a pub was more than “from a choice of 15” for breakfast in Smithfield’s Cock Tavern and including things like kidneys and bubble and squeak.
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I remember reading about those at the Cock. I recommend the breakfast at Cairn Lodge on the M74 to Scotland.
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In my world one choice per option😀
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Six, wasn’t it, Paul?
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Etu,
Kidneys, sausage, mushrooms, tomatoes, bubble and squeak, fried bread – yes, six it was in the Cock Tavern.
That’s with either Youngs or Bombardier – and usually after the Hope and before the Fox and Anchor.
Then at Waterloo by 10am.
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I was reminded of Martin’s shot, showing your plate of maybe six sausages that time, Paul.
Hearty late breakfasts, especially after an early start in the cold are one of life’s absolute comforts. Long may they continue.
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They’ll be banned soon enough.
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Etu,
Ah yes, six sausages in the Lost Dene.
That was to make up for me not having got there in the last twelve months.
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“Six sausages in the Lost Dene” is as iconic a pub moment as “Public urination on Newark Northgate” or “Stolen Bombay mix in Leicester”, if not “Bass served flat at retiredmartin’s request in the Bath Star”. Perhaps Keir would have got a better reception in the Star than the Raven.
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Yes, that was indeed a proper breakfast. Manchester’s finest.
Had I not spent so long on the Bass in the Star during August 2019 the Raven would have been my twelfth Bath pub, but maybe it’s as unwelcoming as one of Tim’s venues eighteen miles from me.
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The bar looks good, it’ll be a cracker once they’ve finished branding the Bass Ales mirror.
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Black pudding!
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Say no more.
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“which I reckon means TWO (2) post from Clay Cross. ”
I’d nick one of the ‘s’s from Cross and put it on the end of post. 😉
“and recommend the best sugar-free throat sweets.”
If my throat is already sugar-free, do I still need the sweets?
“To win that £1.60 bottle of Wickwar milk stout from B & bargains, when was my last tick ?”
The last time you went camping and didn’t bathe?
“but Mrs RM and I do occasionally disagree”
Arguments (and any, ahem, making up) should most definitely remain sub rosa, as it were. 😉
“Well, Mrs RM, Clay Cross is a dreary Chesterfield suburb. So there.”
(slow golf clap)
“after the mystical Rynkeld Turnpike that I always misspell on my GBG spreadsheet.”
And again here (‘Rykneld’). 🙂
“to the good drinkers of this two street mining town,”
Yes, but, how many horses* (flogged or not)?
* i.e. ‘one horse town’ etc.
“You can trust a pub where the bloke at the bar has a rucksack that’s bigger than your wife.”
Is Si paying people to test out new rucksacks for his triumphant BRAPA return?
“But of course we’re shown to an outside table by a landlord”
Sigh. I keep forgetting that bit.
“and ponder which fourteen (14 !) items to pick.”
Too bad they’res no spam. 😉
“What a daft question, like “Milk on the tea bag before or after the hot water ?*”.”
Ah. Now I get it. Me Mum, god bless, was like that with milk and tea. 🙂
“brown sauce in a ramekin. A ramekin !”
All I see is beans in a (possible) ramekin.
(and your beans seem just as ‘juicy’ as Si’s can he had for one of his SiFiPieFi’s) 😉
“At that moment, I feel reborn.”
Savour the feeling!
“*ALWAYS milk before hot water, fools.”
That was me mum!
(well, milk in the cup/mug first at least)
Cheers!
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Confession – I have NO idea what a ramekin is, Mrs RM said “Oooh, ramekin and I assumed the sauce !
That Rykneld was, for once, deliberate. The post(s) wasn’t !
You’re sugar-free ?
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“Confession – I have NO idea what a ramekin is, Mrs RM said “Oooh, ramekin and I assumed the sauce !”
I only knew because my wife’s a cook.
“That Rykneld was, for once, deliberate. The post(s) wasn’t !”
I kinda figured that… to both! 🙂
“You’re sugar-free ?”
With my darling wife away… indeed! (LOL)
Cheers
PS – I see BRAPA has written a, well, BRAPA post (you and I have already replied to his SiFiPieFi thingy). I’m off to post there before you’re latest whilst I wait for my painter to show up. 😉
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In the early seventies, Clay Cross briefly became national news after its Labour council defied the government by refusing to increase rents for its tenants: https://claycrosstoday.co.uk/history/clay-cross-rent-act-1970/
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Fascinating post, Matthew, thanks.
How those councillors got hammered, and yet now the Government actually boast of their intention to break laws, simply snigger when they do, and nothing at all happens.
We’re Donald Ducked.
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Jaipur, a bostin looking breakfast and Joe Jackson.
Could be a new holy trinity
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Clay Cross is a proper gritty Swad style town….good effort sir!
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