retiredmartin

January 2026. Liverpool.

Ten minutes walk from Love Lane through Liverpool One‘s shops brings me to my Travelodge, and reminds me I still haven’t repaired that wedding ring I had surgically removed by Ernest Jones Jewellers here in 2023.

My room costs £24.99, which in 1993 would have bought you a terraced house in Anfield, and gives you this majestic view of two famous Beer Guide pubs;

It’s barely 4pm, the museums are closed, and 3 rapid pints (all ticks !) leave me feeling disinclined to walk to Bootle to take pictures of urban dereliction for you.

But within an hour I’m out and about, in need of crispy beef and one more classic pub.

Ooh, green bollards at the top of Roscoe Street,

there to stop a stampede of Pub Men on their way to one of the Famous Five GBG ever-presents.

Actually, the Roscoe Head isn’t that frantic just at 5pm on a Thursday in January, but the clientele makes up in quality what it lacks in quantity.

Fifty-three straight years in the Beer Guide, and not much has changed. I took this picture back in 2016, the last time I’d visited, and I doubt it’s much different.

but I do remember the Roscoe as having a cask range that would delight Stafford Paul with its “beers the average pub visitor has heard of“.

The Jarl is just being poured, so I don’t even need to make a decision, other than where to sit.

That bench seating looks nice, better than the high seats around the beer barrels of Love Lane.

The couple opposite play cards, two young lads come in and discuss Indian ballet (possibly), and a note from landlady Carol tells you nicely not to flush hand towels down the loo.

It’s a Proper Liverpool Pub, and when the Jarl (cool, chewy) edges up from NBSS 3.5 to 4 I realise I’ve made the right call to revisit the Roscoe.

Lacings never lie.