July 2023. Sheffield.
Yes, finally July. Time to start exploring our own city, for a change.
I knew Sheffield pretty well before we moved from Waterbeach, after annual pub ticking trips stetching back 3 decades.
Notably in 2007 I visited a few months after the devastating floods of 25 June 2007. Look at the state of the Hillsborough pitch;
they still played a League Cup tie against Millwall that afternoon because footballers weren’t entitled, overpaid primadonnas back in those days.
My walking route took me from Meadowhall Travelodge, through industrial Brightside and the Corner Pin (RIP) into the centre and the Old Queens Head, then up the hills beyond the Rivelin Valley.
I only know for sure I walked that route because I distinctly recall visiting the Robin Hood in Little Matlock, just before its closure.
The tally that day was at least fifteen (15) miles, but I wasn’t making Mrs RM do quite that many on Saturday as we headed into Rivelin for our 10,000 steps.
This is one of the picture book walking trails among Sheffield’s Seven Hills, with a chance to see industrial heritage as well as several varieties of ducks.
You also get to see young people about to fall in the river at the big chair,
and older blokes standing in the river staring at fish.
The weather goes from cloudy to sunny to drizzle in an hour. The drizzle gives us an excuse to stop in the (non-Guide) Rivelin,
a stone built pub on the top of the hill which I assumed would be full of weekend diners gorging on 2-for-£14 pie and chips.
Not a bit of it. Bar one family just licking their plates at 2pm it’s entirely boozing, folk alternating between the bar and the outside mound with its views across the valley.
The little note on “Yorkshire Farmer” says CASH IS KING, which saves me asking what they prefer.
Mrs RM has sat right beneath a TV that’s just been switched to an Ashes classic rapidly swinging away from England. Goodness knows what the atmosphere would have been like a day later.
We’re taking it easy, just a half of Guinness (for the iron) and a cool, tasty half of Pale (for the pre-emptive tick, NBSS 3.5), still branded glasses.
Four pounds twenty pence, in what you’d think would be a destination dining pub on the edge of the Peak. How does Sheffield do it.
Wonderful. A real Sheffield bloke feel, which I urge Mrs RM to capture surreptitiously on her expensive phone so that when she finally starts her blog (title has been submitted to focus group for review) she’ll have some local material.
“Look straight ahead, Mrs RM“. She looks left.
“No. look STRAIGHT AHEAD“. She looks right.
So I take it for her.
The soundtrack, competing with the Ashes, goes from “Mr Brightside” to “Flashdance“,
and a bloke hums along. “Wot a feel….ing“. Stay long enough and you’ll definitely hear Billy Ocean.
We set off as the sun broke through, taking the high road above the valley back to the Blind Monkey, which for a change we didn’t go in.
retiredmartin 