‘We should do this more often’

In his weekly The Bar Man column, Jeff Hoyle discusses a recent trip to the north west…

Time was when we made regular trips to the north west to watch Bury FC, but this came to an end with the collapse of the club and the restrictions imposed by Covid.

A phoenix club was founded and for a while played just down the road at Radcliffe, a ground I had never visited, but a chance arose recently when Radcliffe played host to Kings Lynn Town.

After a good game in which Lynn triumphed 2-1, it was time to check in at the hotel in nearby Bury. Our evening took me back to the town of my birth, with another first for me, a pint in the Good Beer Guide listed Greenmount Cricket Club, where Gary and Phil Neville had both played as youngsters.

The packed bar where the football on the TV entertained people of all ages served good beer from Ilkley Brewery, but no food, so it was on up to Holcombe Village to try the Shoulder of Mutton, a pub which I first drank in while perhaps slightly under age.

The interior has been opened up, but the beer is better and my shoulder of mutton set me up for the evening. Going down the ‘one in four’ Rake to Ramsbottom is slightly easier than walking up as I did many years ago every morning for a couple of terms to pick up a lift to work.

In those days Ramsbottom was very much a Lancashire mill town, while now hospitality dominates and we discovered another new bar thanks to the Good Beer Guide.

Casked has the look of a 1960s milk bar but serves excellent cask beer and pizza. If only we had known. Still, a swift pint allowed us time to return to the British Legion Club, also listed in the Good Beer Guide.

I used to accompany my father there on visits back in the early years of the century, and little has changed. The beer is better, with a couple of handpumps now installed, but there was no Saturday evening entertainment.

It transpired that it was happy hour between 8 and 10, so my pint cost me a mere £2.50, yet there were only about half a dozen customers. I hope that they attract more people on other evenings, or the future looks bleak.

Next day I had planned a real treat for the Bar Wife. Brunch with her nephew in a bar in the Northern Quarter of Manchester close to where he lives, followed by Swinton v Wakefield rugby league at Heywood Road in Sale.

Afterwards it was round the M60 to meet up with some friends for the evening. En route, we had time to check out the Greater Manchester Pub of the Year, the Northumberland Arms at Marple.

A community-owned pub, it seemed to be thriving. The Tintwhistle Brass Band - ‘one of the finest musical institutions in the North West of England’ - were just packing up their instruments, but the pop-up dumpling bar in the car park was still going strong.

The beer was fabulous and if it does make it through the round of 17 in CAMRA’s Pub of the Year competition, it could be a tough contest against our own Blackfriars Tavern in Yarmouth.

The evening was rounded off with a couple of pints of Hydes Original and a fine Sunday roast while we caught up with Roger and Pamela, who we first met at a Bury game in Tamworth or Darlington or maybe Sunderland.

Next day, we headed across the Pennines to Scarborough to watch the Linnets’ Tuesday evening game, thinking ‘We should do this more often’.

bar.man@btinternet.com