retiredmartin

October 2023. Wem. Shropshire.

Our friend Will (aka Sheffield “Premier League Luton” Hatter) has been on top #PubMan form recently, planning exciting trips to exotic small unsung towns like Brigg, Leeds and Wem.

Ah, Wem. No current GBG entries, in fact a bit of a North Shropshire Beer Guide desert between Shrewsbury and Whitchurch these days. Perfect for a day out, especially as there’s 3 trains to reach it from Sheffield.

Stafford Paul was there to greet us at Wem Station; he’d been there for 2 hours thinking up pubs I can use for blogpost titles I’ll use later. He’d missed this one;

My totally infallible spreadsheet tells me I’ve NEVER been to a Wem pub, but I have had a Chinese takeaway here. Unfortunately my record of Crispy Beefs and Singapore Rices is rather lax, so I can’t tell you which of the three I frequented, and since I wasn’t staying over in my campervan I couldn’t try all three of them later that evening.

But I was feeling pecking, and Paul and Will tend to think calories in beer are sufficient on days like this, so after the obligatory photos of garden machinery,

and town theatre,

I popped in the Pastry Box for something, anything.

If you thought folk standing at the bar asking for samples were a pain, you should try queuing in a Shropshire bakery at midday.

I picked the “Wem Egg” (top) despite it not being prefaced with “Famous”, and asked the nice lady the story of why it’s so-named.

It was so long and dull I’ve long forgotten it, but at least it will have irritated the bloke behind me in the queue. Nice pics on their Facebook page.

It was OK, but a pork pie with egg isn’t exactly the 7th Wonder of the world (the 8th was a pop band with Patsy Kensit), and it had gone by the time we reached what was once Wem Brewery.

I’ve raided the CAMRA 50th anniversary website for this photo of a demonstration against the 1988 closure of a “much-loved” brewery whose beers included such classics as “Bitter” and “Mild”.

You can probably spot Paul in this photo.

Enough of the past, onto the present.

But first, Tilley.