retiredmartin

November 2023. New Mills.

A BIG day out in Manchester must always start with The Breaking Of The Journey on the way.

The fast train from Sheff takes 54 minutes and stops in Stockport; the slow one through the Peak takes 83 minutes and allows you to finish Derbyshire in New Mills.

Perhaps only Chorley has provided so much pubby excitement as New Mills in the last decade, and all of the former’s boom is due to micropubs, whereas the latter’s is genuinely diverse.

Mrs RM is genuinely smitten by t’Mills, and would have had us move there in 2020 if it was a bit closer to the A1.

The Millennium walkway round the Goyt calls from the train,

and I actually find Google urging me to take an unexpected short cut to Chalkers.

It’s not a walk I’d have fancied doing an hour later in the dark, or in snow,

but it cuts 3 minutes off the journey that I will find useful later,

and means I get to admire the Swizzels factory and the industrial heritage of Newtown.

Another slippy walk over the railway,

and you’re at one of only four (4) snooker clubs in the Guide. I guessed that number; there used to be one near Reading and one in Darlington so please feel free to correct me.

No buzzer, no entry requirements, just a sign telling you to enter your car reg or it’ll be crushed. Possibly by a robot looking like this;

Half a dozen in, none of them using two fairly low key tables.

In fact, two pool tables hardly justify the description “Snooker Club”, and the cask wasn’t bargain price either.

But it WAS incredibly friendly, and Jefferson Airplane on the stereo is very niche in 2023. Actually, I’ve just remembered it was Queen, no the Jeffs.

All very ’90s cocktail bar with pool table, a pleasingly different GBG24 entry, and the bar staff with the Hi Vis punters (“I’d have spat me dummy out“) was worth the £4 for the local Storm (NBSS 3).

Yards away, at least two (2) potential Torrside outlets loom, ready to take a place in GBG25.

New Mills never sleeps.