August 2023. Lancaster.
Mrs RM had been determined to get a photo of us in front of the Barbie poster, but there are still decency laws in this country so we had to make do with Margot and the bloke.
I’d made an effort to wear pink,
but, just like Stef Chura’s fizz-drinking alien, I’d rather overdone the lime and soda (on top of unlimited coffee at breakfast) and was glad we’d bought tickets nearest the loos. Glad it wasn’t the 3 hours of Oppenheimer.
£4.99 tickets in the front four rows. In central Lancaster !
It’s a proper “movie” that doesn’t try too hard to appeal to “grown-up” and I can see why even my 24 lad enjoyed it.
By a stroke of luck, my last two Lancashire GBG ticks were on the main road south to the M6. In previous years I might have asked for a diversion to Heysham so I could nip across and finish the Isle of Man while Mrs RM did her nails but in 2023 I’m better behaved.
The Wobbly Cobbler has tents up outside,
and inside it’s packed with the sort of crowd you get in a Cambridge free house on quiz night.
The staff here were charming, and chatty, and almost disinterested in taking payment. Simon will love them.
Not sure about the table decoration, which I almost ate by accident,
but the local Farm Yard was cool and rich (3.5+).
Just down the road, past the University at Ellel with its 73 bars, Galgate’s New Inn too “cosy” to another level.
Sandwiches and sugary biscuits on the table in the pool room, a crowd watching City take the lead in the Charity Shield,
children and canines under your feet,
and (after a wait) a startlingly good pale (NBSS 4) from Recoil.
Clearly a birthday or wake taking place, and I’ll confess I was relieved when the beer was poured, lest I be exposed as an interloper and kicked out one tick short of the set.
Honestly, it’s a joy to see such unreconstructed boozers as the New Inn enter the Guide, in what has been a golden year for new pubs.
retiredmartin 
Unreconstructed boozer sums it up very nicely.
The New Inn in Galgate was my pub for a couple of years, and shares some responsibility for my expulsion from Lancaster University. I was in one of the quiz teams there – New Inn (Galgate) B – we were better than the so-called A team, of course. Runners up in the Lancaster City Quiz League a couple of times.
It was a Mitchell’s pub in those days, run by Dave and Brenda with help from their daughter Vanessa. The Green Dragon across the road was an eccentric Yates&Jackson house, and there was also a Boddingtons pub, the Plough, just along the road past the railway bridge.
At Cartmel racecourse in August 1975 I bumped into Dave and Brenda just before the first race. I’d spent all my money – there were no ATMs in those days and it was a bank holiday. I said to Dave, “lend us a fiver – I’ll give it you back after this race”. He didn’t even hesitate, I backed the winner and gave him his £5 back, then backed all the other winners too.
Happy days.
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Of course you were better than the “B” team. How many of the University bars were in the GBG back then ? I’m sure I’ve been to at least two.
Blimey you were the original Frankie Dettori then ? (he says, knowing nothing about racing).
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You probably ran into my grandparents at some point then, as they lived in Galgate from 1952 until 1996. They lived on the council estate behind the railway bridge. Though Grandad drank in the New Inn, Plough, and Green Dragon rarely until Galgate WMC closed down in the 90s. As BRAPA mentioned, I threw up on the pool table once at the Green Dragon. Though I was only four.
My mother went to school across the road from where the Wobbly Cobbler now is. She had to walk there from Galgate every day in all weathers, as she always reminded us when we being driven up the A6 to Lancaster.
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I used to walk two miles to school along the A10 from about six as both parents were working and no buses. Never went in a pub on the way home, either.
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It’s a shame that both Mitchell’s and Yates & Jackson went to the Great Brewery in the Sky. ☹️
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I had to walk eight miles to school every day in the snow, and when I got there the teacher would thrash me with a rolled up newspaper.
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If you were lucky.
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