retiredmartin

September 2026. Goldthorpe. South Yorkshire.

Mrs RM and I were having one of our romantic* chats about blogging yesterday.

Approaching middle-age, the most important things are to eat healthily and keep the brain telling the body you’d like it to keep going a bit longer, please.

Our respective blogs keep the brains going as well as anything, though Mrs RM reckons she spends longer planning and structuring her posts in her head than actually writing them, which is why that Yerevan edition is taking an eternity.

I tend to just write, and do my thinking on long walks from railway stations through challenging mining villages like Goldthorpe (pop. 6,051).

“What my readers would REALLY like now is a series on post-industrial South Yorkshire rail stops with nothing to see” I thought, narrowly avoiding** a tree falling on a house next to the train line.

The Dearne valley (Wombwell, Wath, Swinton et al) regeneration area makes great claims for its hidden beauty, and the greenery and contour lines back that up.

I’ve got forty-three minutes between trains back to Sheffield; I enjoy that pressure of forming a snap opinion on a place and sneaking a pint that forces me to jog back to the station.

You can see the Edwardian grandeur in places, but the shops now sell e-cigs instead of snuff, and polish your nails instead of selling them.

Proper shop frontages,

an ancient art quest,

and the sense of a well-kept place with civic pride.

But not a lot of real ale, anymore, now the John Smiths has gone.

But Goldthorpe has one cask pub, and as you’ll know one is plenty etc. Let’s go there next.

*_{Any conversation with Mrs RM meets my definition of “romantic”.}

**_{By about a year.}