retiredmartin

August 2025. Burnley.

My feeble attempts to visit GBG pubs since Guide completion seem limited by a) having to spend the weekends ploughing up and down the A1 between Sheffield and Cambridge, b) only drinking pints and c) using public transport. Just as well none of the other tickers would do b) and c)….

Shockingly, I hadn’t made any incursions into Lancashire this GBG year, and I’m not sure some of these places actually exist.

Expensive rail fares too, even now I get Old Codger (not CAMRA) discount.

But Burnley looked a bargain at £16.45, though it mean two and a half hours of trundling and packed Northern trains and a couple of changed.

One of those was half an hour in Halifax where Viet Baguette’s bargain lunch (picked purely because I couldn’t pronounce it) manages to look like 1970s canteen than Vietnamese cuisine.

Arriving in Burnley after hipster Halifax and Hebden really is like going back 50 years, when the Clarets were a top division team, and the trees grew in the ground rather than out of chimneys.

I’m obviously a fan of Burnley, which seems to encompass an area from Rawtenstall to Colne, but it’s a not a town I ever feel I really know, and it’s hardly a town I want to walk 6 miles in the English heatwave with my two pubs in the ‘burbs.

So I hop on the first bus east, and get charged a quid. “One pound all journeys this week” says the driver/ticket issuer/tour guide. hoping I’ll sit down and stop saying “Wow“. It’s £3 most places (except London).

The route takes you past a series of pubs named after Burnley managers,

and then somewhere near Briercliffe takes an unexpected detour and appears to be heading towards Nelson, where you really don’t want to go.

So I keep pressing the buzzer to make the bus stop and it keeps ignoring me but then veers sharply in the direction of Harle Syke where I know my pub is, but I’m too embarrassed to admit to a mistake (being a man) and have to get off the bus and walk the last half mile.

I could have avoided all this trouble if I’d pre-emptively visited the Commercial when I was on this very Burnley terraced street 2 years ago in the Craven Heifer,

but now, 4 hours after leaving home I’m here, and it’s brilliant.

“Y’allright ?” says a bloke in a Hugo Boss who’s just arrived from a morning fishing on Rowley Lake.

Oh grief. I hope he’s not going to talk about fishing. All I know about fish is that they’re not chickens. But they’re probably from the same family, I’ve seen those Instagram videos.

It’s OK. He’s entertaining, though not an ale man.

He tells me that the Hydes beers are OK because “they’re not too bitter“.

Which makes me realise I know nothing about beer as I’d always assume Hydes were bitter. I need to ask Will; he knows beer.

What I do know is that pint of rarely seen Lowry is sensationally cool and crisp (NBSS 4). Lacings never lie, as someone wise once said.

It’s a great community pub, all human life is here, hiding Mr Fish’s van keys to universal hilarity.

I really wanted another pint, but as you’ll know the maximum safe level of alcohol for a bus journey is ZERO, less if you’ve already had a coffee, and my coach awaited.