July 2026, Sawley. Derbyshire.
Well I clearly wasn’t taking proper notes last Friday as I can’t remember what we talked about, but since Oxford Nick was there it must have been very intellectual or concerned obscure pysch-pop.
I’m arrogant enough to think I must have been everywhere in the UK ticking pubs, but I’ve never been to Carluke (as Charlene once sang).
And I’d never been to Sawley Marina Cut,
where the Steamboat greeted us with a Dalek,
and a set of beer scores that mean “Assessed by CAMRA members as serving great cask ale.”
“Grainstore’s not drinking well” says someone. Impressively, it was taken off and the beer replaced immediately.
“The chocolate brownie stout is…alright” says another.
Reader, never trust anyone who says a beer is….alright.
I spent five minutes trying to decide whether the sharpness was intended, and still I’m not sure. It was…alright. Mind, if the brewer can’t spell chocolate what hope is there*.
That said, it’s a corker of a pub, with great staff. Charge me £2.50 to look at the stuff and call it a museum, like that Yew Tree in Cauldon.
Stick to lager, and you’ll be fine. The Beano and Motor Cycle Mechanic compete for your reading time,
and the Erewash Valley, or whatever it’s called, delivers the mild smut that characterises the East Midlands.
It’s probablly a charity photo, that’s always the excuse.
*It’s intentional ? Oh.
retiredmartin 
No deliberate spelling mistakes in lager, then. Or are there?
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Larger can be spelt with an “r” if it’s a fuller serving than a pint of cask.
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The marina has just been added to my pending list. The Beano was great until they removed any hint of thwackings on arses of naughty boys.
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Tim in Belper says: and ‘fayre’ should be ‘fare’, no matter what dozens of miss-spelled pub menus say (according to the Oxford English Dictionary). Also, the Steamboat is not at Sawley Marina, that is visible at the very bottom left of your map photo, just below the annotation ‘River Trent’, although that is actually the Sawley Cut, the Trent being the curving waterway above it. End of lesson!
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Fayre enough.
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Thanks for saving me, as a Long Eaton resident for fifteen years, from needing to write that, anon 👍
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Like you and Charlene, I’ve never been to Carluke. However, Wiki tells me that one of its famous sons was Major Thomas Weir, a covenantor and occultist who was executed for bestiality, incest and adultery in 1670. He had a walking stick with a human head on it. Don’t know if the current denizens of Carluke take after him.
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Blimey ! Quite a charge list. Of course, you can be executed for confusing a marina for a cut these day.
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In spite of living – patchily – less than a mile away for fifteen years, I didn’t actually know what the proper name for the place was, Martin. “The bit where the canal meets the river” sufficed. I did reckon the marina to be somewhere else though.
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It says on Wiki Sawley has a famous marina and I assumed that was it !
10 years ago I was corrected on the same issue by the late Peter Allen, a canal enthusiast.
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I read that as “confusing a marina for a cat.” That should carry a severe sentence.
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I didn’t expect to be greeted in the White Lion with the suggestion that I’d never looked younger, probably from a long overdue haircut two days earlier, but curvature of the spine, first mentioned to me nine years ago, in the Steam Boat suggests otherwise.
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I’m a fan of pubs rather than beer, so generally follow this blog silently. But then the Steamboat appears, the fondly remembered pub of my teenage years till I left in ’79. Where we learned to drink without being idiots, even managed a pint in school time on a cross country run down the canal and back…
And the place is Trent Lock by the way, seem to remember ‘The Trent Lock’ pub used to be called ‘The Navigation’ back then.
Jim
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Thanks Jim. Locks and navigations and cuts and the like tend to merge into one !
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Getting around to this now at Broken Tee Brwg. in Highwood, IL.; a city Theodore Roosevelt [the first U.S. winner of the Nobel Peace Prize] described “the toughest town in the entire U.S.”. The brewpub is just off the U.P. North commuter train line.
Spain just won the #WorldCup2026 in extra time v. Argentina. I cannot recall any team which won a match with no shots on goal. But Spain were playing 11 v. 10. [Two yellow cards]
But I particularly want to respond to the ‘charity’ picture of mild smut in the pub to voice concern that the females in these photographs always wear _black lingerie_. Come on now. How about white, gold, or {gasp} pink lingerie the next time?!
I should mention that Nick C., of “Prop up the Bar” weblog has a more focused glimpse on smut in English pubs. Go browse his weblog.
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Nick has a great blog, and is great company. Glad you enjoy his blog; he has an eye for smut ;-0
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Steve – You’ll be delighted to know I’ve been discussing the World Cup Final with my friend ChatGPT and we can’t work out how Argentina recorded 3 very late shots (none on target) in their 2 hours. One poleaxed a Spain player, one went over the bar, and there was some mild peril that ended up in a corner. Pathetic.
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