SURVIVING THE X99 TO WETHERBY

May 2025. Wetherby.

The relentless driving has been a bit tiring (boring) this year, so I’m trying to do as many GBG entries as possible by rail, before the campervan gets put into service for the tricky ticks.

Up the A1 Wetherby has a new entry, a first for what seems like decades, but it still doesn’t have a station. So I brace myself for an hour on the X99 through north Leeds, horrible Harewood and the villages off the A58.

It was a tortuous hour, my worst since the Vectis buses on the Isle of Wight, a series of abrupt halts that sent grannies spinning and my tummy whirling.

I recovered for 10 minutes by the Wharfe, a peaceful garden we used a lot for fish and chips halts in the 90s.

The last time here the boys lost a plastic football they’d bought in Blyth on that river. Simpler times.

Back in 1993 we stayed at Don (67) and Joan (65)’s guest house for £32, and I don’t remember going in the Sam Smiths pub then,

but if I did, and took a photo, and that caused Sir Humphrey to close it I apologise now.

The pubs on the main drag look a little “tired”,

but there’s a Spoons on its way this year so I’m sure folk will be delighted.

My half hour walk to Bosun’s was one of the dullest of the year, enlivened only by a detour to a second (count them) industrial estate brewery tap en route.

I’m not a fan of taps, but it often seems everyone else is, and Wetherby Brew comes into  its own on a sunny Friday afternoon when you can sit on a bench in a car park next to a lawnmower shop. Better than inside, mind.

It’s mainly friends and families,

the electronic display is for Haribo not hops,

and my pint of Porter is incredibly misjudged on a hot day when the pale was the correct choice.

The bloke next table says “I don’t care about politics, I just want Eurovision, to make me happy“.

I’ll do without both, ta.

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Published by retiredmartin

Retired NHS, doing long walks around UK and the world to record the great bits. Focused on Good Beer Guide pubs and live music.

26 thoughts on “SURVIVING THE X99 TO WETHERBY”

  2. Hello Martin, I can accept the gratuitous roasting of our beautiful market town, but I will not stand for the denigration of our comprehensive X99/X98 bus service. I cannot speak for the competency of the driver, but I actually took the service myself this morning (Leeds-bound) and found the route, as always, to be a visual symphony of natural beauty. I suggest you travel by car and use our world famous service station next time you visit if this is your attitude to our noble Yorkshire Bus Company.

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    2. Sorry, in seriousness, well done you for defending public transport. It just doesn’t agree with my soft southern stomach.
      And we can agree that Wetherby is a lovely market town I often stop at if I’m not drinking.

      But I wouldn’t wish Wetherby services on anyone !

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  3. What type of camera phone were you using in 1993 – a very, very early Nokia prototype due to Mrs RM’s hi-tech contacts?

    Tap rooms on industrial estates are quite weird I think. I’ve not actually been to one yet, but mum lives in Denbigh (probably hasn’t had a GBG entry this millennium, so sleep easy), and Black Cloak Brewing (of Colwyn Bay micropub fame) have relocated the brewery and opened a taproom on the town’s industrial estate. You’d have to be quite invested in their beer to visit the place as it’s an awkward location, but that’s the sort of weird challenge I like. There’s a lawnmower place nearby, but, on a personal note, next door to Emyr Evans tractor sales where dad bought his last Massey Ferguson, and also opposite Meirion Davies a’i Feibion (and Sons) agricultural merchants, with whom I had my first ever summer job at 14 (or maybe 15) years old.

    I’m rambling now, well lubricated on a train back to Cardiff, having ignored the cat-gate outrage on social media and visited BCA’s latest new pub in Ludlow. https://toot.wales/@rhysw/114564203373478847

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      5. Oops, yes. A Joules pub in Wrexham not BCA. I’d been to Rose and Crown as well and brain foggier than usual for some reason. So for getting everyone’s hopes up!

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      7. Yes, there’s certainly been a Joules one for quite a few years now. Unless it’s hot off the press, I don’t think there’s a BCA one.

        (Aleing Paul)

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  4. Also love your misjudged porter purchase, that’s exactly the daft thing I wold do, as was having a third pint just now necessitating the use of the train toilet, of which this train has a malfunctioning door, so the ticket guy stood outside guarding my honour will I had a slash. What an adventure.

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    1. OMG a bunch of absolutely leathered (yet surprisingly polite) young girls have come on at y Fenni and one has done a bee line for the toilet. This is going to be carnage.

      (Sorry for hijacking the comments, but this seemed the most efficient way of expressing myself)

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  5. The station closed in 1964 and all the tracks have long gone too. It would be impossible to rebuild.

    The X98 and 99 do not go via Harewood! They are currently run, very unreliably, by a poor bus company who luckily have recently thrown in the towel on those services, so it will be different operator from the Autumn.

    If you want a posh pub, in the poshest village in Yorkshire, then you should have got off the bus at The Windmill in Linton.

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