retiredmartin

September 2024. Rotherham.

“This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius” sang the cast of Hair, but actually this is the Age of Rotherham. You’ll find out why tomorrow.

Wednesday saw a concerted effort to remedy a year of neglect in our garden. Here’s the result;

You can now see eighteen (18) GBG (24, 25 is embargoed) pubs from the upstairs window. The downside was that Mrs RM was still coughing up ivy on Friday and missed my trip to Waterbeach to welcome the Southworths.

“Is it time for a pint ?” she asks. Attagirl, as the Yanks say.

An hour later, we emerged from Rotherham Central to the glorious sight of the underpass to Kimberworth.

If she’d been hoping for something more glamorous, Barnsley or Mexborough perhaps, she hid her disappointment well,

and I rewarded her with scenic views of Milmoor, Rotherham United’s abandoned stadium.

Americans will be familiar with the modernisation of our football over the last 30 years. Faced with a need for all-seating stadia and corporate boxes, clubs move out of characterful city centre ground called “Gay Meadow” and “Elm Park” to identikit stadia named after an insurance company and the old ground gets a Tesco or flats built on it.

Not in Rotherham. They leave Milmoor in 2008 for a site if anything closer to the centre, named after an actual American city, and leave the old site intact but crumbling and home to (I kid you not) under-18 women’s teams. How bizarre, as a Kiwi once sang.

The 25 minute walk to our target pub takes us through Rotherham’s industrial heartland, home to pubs with Carling Black Label signs,

and memories (for Stafford Paul if not me) of Mappin’s beers).

Rotherham CAMRA have done a top job keeping details of these keg pubs in Kimberworth updated on What Pub,

and who know, one day they might be as great as the pub we’re about to go in.

“Are we there yet ?” says Mrs RM as we reach the iconic Heinz sauce advert.

Luckily, we are..