retiredmartin

Our Macclesfield crawl headed towards a climax at The Castle now, after a quick stop at the obligatory Robbies pub.

Speaking of iconic beers,

we literally bumped into Vaux Wanderer leaving the Jolly Sailor (his de facto home when he’s not doing something called work), and our group was suddenly up to seven (six humans).

Mudgie kindly pointed out the Fent Shop, solving a mystery that had lain dormant since King’s Lynn,

and then we were in the George & Dragon at just the wrong time on a Friday to nab a large table.

Mudgie details the pub insightfully on his post,; I thought it a bit “Robbies by Numbers“, but frankly that’s still better than 95% of the pubs in Lincolnshire and Bedfordshire. Nice map putting the Wirral firmly back in Cheshire here;

some decent bench seating once a kindly chap moved for us, and a decent if foamy pint of Unicorn (NBSS 3). Some of our number were never going to be converted to the Robbies cause, I sensed.

But the drama here came from the jukebox, which I swear was playing more Dylan. Can you access Cheshire juke boxes from Minneapolis and Chicago ?

Anyhow, this machine simply refused to play “Kashmir”*, the track calculated to give the best Value For Money. Mudgie rightly demanded his money back and then somehow got extra tracks to torture delights us with.

I know Mudgie has wider musical tastes than is often assumed, but this one rather came as a surprise;

Mind, the juke box was still playing the 13 minute version of Aqualung when we left.

*What did you expect – Tomberlin, Girl in Red and Lucy Dacus ?