Pubs have been the bedrock of many a community for generations and it sad to see so many going to the wall.
Even those that struggle on with exorbitant energy prices have cut down there opening hours, even closing for two or three days every week. Mondays and Tuesday have become a wasteland for the casual drinker or diner and many now close after the Sunday lunch trade.
But when is a pub a pub or when is it a restaurant?
Now when it comes to having a drink this cool cat isn’t quite so ‘with it’ cool as I prefer a proper ale and, sometimes, a wee drop of the Scottish water to go with it.
I was brought up on Jennings and had my first drink when that famous Cockermouth brewery also had a mild on draught.
It is rare now to see a draught mild and when I do, a ‘half and half’, bitter and mild brings back long lost memories of my youthful drinking (over 18 of course, well, nearly…. ) in a traditional town pub.
Of course, the demise of Jennings at the hands of a corporate global drinks conglomerate (As the advert might have gone: “If Carlsberg made pubs, they would be pretty dire at it”) has left a gaping hole in, not only beer making, but in the town in which it sat for well over a hundred years and where the smell of brewing was part of the fabric of the community.
In my early drinking days it was rare to find a pub that did food. In my then local, a bag of Cheese XL crisps and a pickled egg, known fondly as chicken and chips, or a bag of salted peanuts, was as much as you could get as this was even before the days of pork scratchings and Scampi Fries!
We have come a long way since those days where women were frowned upon, and, rightly, the establishments that serve drink are welcoming to everyone and, often, serve reasonably priced food.
It all began with a basket and a car. Country pubs had to attract drinkers from the town and cities and, as it was never, after the introduction of the breathalyser, a place to mix drinking with driving, they attracted couples and families with hearty food served in baskets and with roaring real fires in winter and a beer garden in summer.
In those early days there was always a debate about exactly how much you could drink before you would fail the breath test. Was it one pint or two? Did it matter if it was lager or beer? Could you line your stomach before you went out with a pint of milk?
All quite ridiculous as science will tell you that having ANY alcohol in your body will diminish your ability to drive yet, even today, you will find the odd dinosaur who will claim they drive better after three pints. No – you only THINK you do!
So, the country pub began to change. No longer the preserve of the drinker, they either moved into the food game or they closed.
Two of my early country haunts that fell by the wayside were the Blue Bell at Embleton, Cockermouth, and the Black Cock at Eaglesfield, both of which served beer from a jug in the 1960s. But others thrived with food. The Sun Inn, Bassenthwaite was my first ‘…. in a basket’ meal and we even got as far as Beckermet and The Royal Oak.
Occasionally, we alighted on the Scale Hill Hotel near Loweswater which served fine beers and you could relax in wingback leather chairs by the fire and The Old Crown in Hesket Newmarket, saved as a village pub by the local drinkers and one that now thrives with its very own brewery, one of the first of the many Cumbrian microbreweries.
I have a vivid memory of having a lunchtime pint in The Moorcock Inn, Garsdale Head in the early 1970s, where, when we enquired about food, a frail voice from the back called out, “We have pork pies”. We were the only visitors that lunchtime and the pork pies were wonderful as were the landlord and landlady and their roaring log fire, even in June.
We were saddened to read that in 1975, the landlord and landlady died in a fire that destroyed the pub on the day of their retirement.
On a Sunday in yesteryear, I have fond memories of taking the boat to Piel island and being served a pint by a real king. Not sure the, then, licensing hours were strictly adhered to with, as with many country pubs, if there was no rowdiness, the local police gave them some latitude.
All that licensing hours malarkey came to an end with the liberalisation of drinking with Tony Blair’s move to a 24-hour café culture. I am not convinced this was a good thing as I am also not convinced that shops opening on Sundays was good.
This isn’t a religious complaint merely the fact that those who predominantly work in retail are women who could no longer rely on a day with their families, and it also brought the closure of those small shops who serviced the Sunday trade before Tesco et al cornered the market for six hours.
Today, we often head into the countryside for a meal in a country hostelry and, often, spend the night for a getaway B&B and evening meal, sometimes venturing as far afield as Yorkshire, Lancashire or Northumbria.
But I still miss the atmosphere of the pub. In a dining pub, you sit at the table and the conversation is between yourselves. In the pub, you sat at a table and conversed with others at different tables or at the bar.
And that is the beauty of the pub – you meet other people, exchange pleasantries or even get into philosophical debates about the merits of this brewery or that, if it is okay to drink cider with a meal (only in summer) or how the local football team is getting on. And all this, preferably without SkySports on the telly or, even worse, a jukebox!
I applaud those inventive Cumbrian chefs who have been rewarded with Michelin stars. But would I want to eat there? For a start, its expensive and you have to book weeks if not months in advance and, if I am honest, do I want a tasting menu or a decent plate of homemade steak pie and mash, Cumberland Sausage or a gammon steak, or a large cod with chips and mushy peas?
No, I want a pub that serves food, not a restaurant that doesn’t even let you sit at the bar. One where you can have a crack with the landlady or the couple at the bar while you refresh your glass, or the family on the next table.
I have a reasonably local pub that serves food and where you can have a good natter over a pint and a pie. And, no, I am not going to spoil it by telling you where it is. Find somewhere that suits you, spend some quality time this Easter with family and friends, and leave me to my secret pub.
About Cumbria Cat
Born in Cumberland and, now, back living in Cumberland, having spent most of the past 50 years in some place called Cumbria, this cat has used up all nine lives as well as a few others.
Always happy to curl up on a friendly lap, the preference is for a local lap and not a lap that wants to descend on the county to change it into something it isn’t. After all, you might think Cumbria/Cumberland/Westmorland is a land forged by nature – the glaciers, the rivers, breaking down the volcanic rocks or the sedimentary layers – but, in reality, the Cumbria we know today was forged by generations of local people, farmers, miners, quarriers, and foresters.
This cat is a local moggy, not a Burmese, Ocicat or Persian, and although I have been around the block a few times, whenever I jump, I end up on my feet back in my home county. I am passionate about the area, its people, past, present and future, and those who come to admire what we hold dear, be it lakes and mountains, wild sea shores, vibrant communities or the history as rich and diverse as anywhere in the world.
