August 2024. Stockport.
Saturday morning in Sheffield, no plans, and frankly no chance of a new GBG pub.
My nearest tick is the Crown in the Yorkshire Dales, technically that’s the same county,
but a mere 13 hours by public transport. Honestly! 13 hours.
I cut my losses and opted for a few ticks in the wonderful Matthew Curtis Manchester Guide, the best CAMRA book since GBG 2000.
I could even combine it with a rare sighting of my hometown team at Stockport County on the first day of the new football season,
and spent 15 minutes on the train through the Peak attempting to buy a ticket.
30 years ago this would have involved a) walking to the away fates, b) handing over £7 in coins, c) pushing the turnstile and standing on a crumbling terrace watching the ball being hoofed towards a small Canadian and a tall Brummie in front of a crowd of 3,782.
In 2024, a similar fixture is ALL TICKET (10,000) , and I have to log on to a website and forget my password twice in order to set up an account to buy an online ticket for a seat behind the goal for £24 and watch the ball being hoofed towards no-one. That’s progress.
Being Stockport, it starts to rain approaching Chinley,
and I realise with mild alarm my £24 seat is in the uncovered stand.
Best numb the pain then before a 5:30 kick-off,
but first a long awaited return to the Hat Museum, a gem of a place,
even if I arrived too late for the hat making demo (bit noisy judging by these headphones).
I’ve been plugging Stocky pubs on this blogs since the start, but the air raid tunnels, town museum and this celebration of hats are all gems, and as Mrs RM sagely notes it’s not as if Manchester itself is packed with free attractions.
See millinery through the ages, admire the hat Jeremy Corbyn wore on that Newsnight episode,
and wonder what the main industry in Stockport is now.
Blackpool Jane will do it justice, I did my standard 20 minutes, stuck the coins in the donation box, and headed for the pub,
pausing only to admire Stockport’s version of the Glasgow bloke with a traffic cone on his head.
retiredmartin 
I spotted the subliminal product placement of the Rieker slip-ons in the Corbin hat picture!
It’s a shame I made my last trip to Stockport on a day when all the attractions were shut as the hat museum looks a good’un. Wouldn’t mind a trip to Edgeley Park myself, either.
LikeLike