Lake District Vignettes: Beer- the main course

Where we venture into comfortable hostelries and sup.

As we are both sad librarian types, Marsh and I planned a pub crawl around Ambleside using the internet.  This research proved invaluable as did the local Camra magazine Lakes and Ale- you know, fail to prepare, prepare to fail, and all that.

So here are our favourites and one to avoid.

Conveniently located at the bottom of our street, and a Good Beer guide regular, we very much enjoyed the time we spent in the Golden Rule.  The Rule is everything a Northern pub should be, right down to the velveteen banquettes and cosy snugs.  No music, no food, but a good variety of ales, all well kept and served.  Marsh opted for Robinson's Dizzy Blonde while I, unsportingly felt drawn to the Grolsch.

First food of the trip was taken in the Unicorn; decent pub grub and particularly good old-school puddings with custard- Marsh was happy!  Impressive selection of Hartley's and Robinson's ales, Hartley's XB and Robinson's Unicorn deserve a mention.

The White Lion really deserved a second visit but time sadly got the better of us, which was a shame as they had beers from the Kewsick Brewing Company on tap, Thirst Fall I think.  Keswick's Thirst Run one of my Desert Island beers: I love the stuff.

Let's get the one to avoid over with before the final flourish.

In 1999 my local brewery paid for me and a bunch of other school-leavers from the North West to experience life in another country; we went to China for the best part of three weeks.  I'd never been on a plane before, never been out of the country, I'd just turned 19 and it was an amazing experience.  I've always been happy to pay them back in pints.  I've drank a lot of Thwaites bitter in Blackburn and Darwen and wouldn't hesitate to recommend the Keswick Lodge (predictably, in Keswick) for beer, food or a bed for the night, but all these good experiences made the Sportsman's Arms in Ambleside even more of a let down.  Marsh and I necked the halves I'd fortuitously ordered as quickly as we could.  We were the only souls in there and there was a choice of four draught options, and one of those was Coke.  The barman had indicated that the manager had lost interest, they only money they seemed to be making was from the less than inspiring 'party room' downstairs.  There was plenty of Sambuca on offer, but we'd come in for a pint of Wainwright.  A shame.

Now for some good news.  Despite being an outside runner the Queen's Hotel provided our beer of the week.  True, it wasn't a cosy or snug, and in some ways it was a bit on the posh side- change out of your boots and waterproofs before you go- but they had a very pleasant and knowledgeable barman.  Sporting an excellent range of ales on tap, the highlight had to be the Yates' Bitter: even a dedicated lager drinker like me was itching for a last pint of it before we went.  Luckily for us the Booth's in Bowness had a plentiful supply which we bought most of!

Lake District Vignettes: Beer- the starter

In Which Marsh and I drink beer solely for the benefit of you, dear reader.  Here I set the scene using unecessarily floral language to evoke nostalgia. 

Ahh, the Northern pub!  Cosy, dark rooms lit by reproduction gas-lamps and a coal fire.  Horse brasses and bedwarming pans glister in the firelight as couples supping from barrel glasses enjoy quiet conversation on red velveteen banquettes, but all this is extra, why we're really here is to experience that wonder of the North: a pint wi 'ead on't.

Now I was raised in the North, when my Dad took me for my first pint I was presented with a ruby elixir topped with just a cream of foam, cool to the touch and a treat to the lips.  As you drank, the head slid down the inside of the glass; the concoction, I was assured, would put hairs on my chest.  In those salad days it never occurred to me that I was one of the fortunate ones, that in the south, particularly in East Anglia, they were bereft of the quiet pleasure of gazing into the foamy shapes left on the inside of the glass.

Here in the East the head of your pint disappears somewhere between the landlord pulling it and it arriving at your lips.  You clearly see it forming as the pint is pulled, but so delicate is this head that it swoons out of existence before it's even had a chance to give you a comedy moustache.  The East Anglian head, or frog eyes to its friends.

Last year Marsh, myself and 38 other lesbians temporarily took over the village of Castleton in the Peak District.  We descended on one of the local pubs without warning; the bar staff wore slightly confused looks on their faces all evening, one young lad's ears burned red all night, but on the plus side they sold plates and plates of food and gallons of ale.  Keen to try the local brew Marsh and I took our time at the bar and got chatting with the staff asking for their recommendations.  Mid way through our 'try before you buy' session a local came to the bar and eyed up the guest ales.  'Adnams' Broadside' declared one of the pump clips, "I'll try one of those," he said.  Marsh and exchanged looks.  He left seemingly happy, but soon returned.  He thrust the frog eyed pint under the barman's nose, "that's not right!" he said.  The barman cleared his throat, "it's from down South; it's supposed to be like that."  The man looked at his pint.  Sensing the uncomfortable atmosphere, and for some reason feeling responsible, we backed the barman.  "All East Anglian ale has that kind of head," Marsh said.  "Yeah," I offered, "we call it frog eyes."  We might as well have been from Klingon.  The barman rushed to the rescue with a sparkler and forced a Northern head onto a half pint of the stuff: it weakly fought for life.  By this point all the colour had drained from the man's face 'that's just not right,' he repeated.  I could tell by the tone that he didn't mean the taste, he meant the morals of it, the very physics of it.  This wasn't a man with a duff pint, this was a man taking his first sup of East Anglian ale.  I saw myself nine years ago and shuddered.  Ever since then, the prospect of a Northern pint fills me with tears of gratitude. 

Join me again soon for Beer- the main course, when I'll actually get round to telling you about the beer we had. 

Beer- it'll put hairs on your chest

Mounted Horsemen, One Relaxing with a Can of Beer, Await the Start of the Parade in Cottonwood Falls, Kansas, near Emporia It Is a Part of theFlint Hills Rodeo, a Major Cultural Event of the Area...06/1974   

Original Caption: Mounted Horsemen, One Relaxing with a Can of Beer, Await the Start of the Parade in Cottonwood Falls, Kansas, near Emporia It Is a Part of the Flint Hills Rodeo, a Major Cultural Event of the Area. Horses and Cattle Trucks Are the Featured Modes of Transportation. It Is a 19th Century "Cowboy" Town in the Heart of the Kansas Flint Hills Region, and near an Area Designated as a Possible Site for a Tall Grass Prairie National Park 06/1974 U.S. National Archives’ Local Identifier: 412-DA-14591 Photographer: Duncan, Patricia D., 1932-

Subjects:
Emporia (Lyon county, Kansas, United States) inhabited place
Environmental Protection Agency
Project DOCUMERICA
Persistent URL: http://arcweb.archives.gov/arc/action/ExternalIdSearch?id=557043
Repository: Still Picture Records Section, Special Media Archives Services Division (NWCS-S), National Archives at College Park, 8601 Adelphi Road, College Park, MD, 20740-6001.
For information about ordering reproductions of photographs held by the Still Picture Unit, visit: www.archives.gov/research/order/still-pictures.html
Reproductions may be ordered via an independent vendor. NARA maintains a list of vendors at www.archives.gov/research/order/vendors-photos-maps-dc.html
Access Restrictions: Unrestricted
Use Restrictions: Unrestricted

Lake District Vignettes: Walks, part the first.

In which Marsh and I trudge around in the wet, and the clouds lower from the very sky; spirits are dampened, but are ultimately revived by a life-changing encounter with a chicken.  


So Marsh and I spent last week in the Lake District.  It rained every day.  Even the day it didn't rain during our walk, it rained on us all the way home.  Of course I'm used to this, being Scottish most of my holidays were spent in a cagoule, often with a rolled up carrier bag on my head (-don't try this at home kids).  Despite the awful conditions Marsh and I went out wearing our cheeriest dispositions, buoyed by the promise of a pint and log fire at the end of it all. 

We had a walk each day, mostly around where we were staying in Ambleside, as we'd not explored that area very much before.  All the rain made the waters of the Scandale Beck flowing under the Sweden Bridges (two old pack-horse bridges) and Stock Ghyll Force most spectacular.  Aira Force, where we took my Dad on the Monday, was even more impressive.  Vast quantities of water spilling from a high, tiny gap, the sound, thunderous, greeted us before the sight of the falls.  My Dad snapped away with his camera, all of us bathed in spray, when suddenly the clouds opened and the sun came out.  The cluster of fully-grown adults gathered at the base of the falls cooed like children as rainbows appeared in the spray.  The clouds returned, but the moment was almost like magic.

Not all the moments were magic though. 

As a recovery aimed leg-stretcher following our ascent of Scafell Pike, Marsh and I took on the task of climbing Wansfell Pike, with afters in the village of Troutbeck. The path to the pike was essentially a rock staircase cut into the hillside, and after an hour of trudging, our empty thighs grumbling all the way, we reached what is one of the loveliest views in the lakes.  Windermere and all its islands lay before us; Patterdale to the right of us.  Well, that's what the guidebook said.  We'd been in low cloud from about 100m in.  We enjoyed fabulous views of cloud, mist, fog and an electric fence as visibility slipped to about 15m.

The next part of the walk crossed a bog: it had to be a bog, didn't it? drizzle, low cloud, miserable, it just had to be a bog.  Our guidebook told us to follow a line of cairns towards a walled track.  There were no cairns on the OS map, and I have a terrible case of cairn blindness, so prudently Marsh took a compass reading and worked out a bearing for the track at the other side of the bog.  Now Marsh as you all know is magnificent and right about everything, with the insignificant exception of rawlplugs; thus it was no trouble at all for her to lead us across a lumpy-bumpy bog, complete with streams and sheep in truly awful visibility and low spirits.

Even with Marsh's orienteering marvel couldn't raise our mood and we thumped into Troutbeck like petulant teenagers.  However the sun came out, so we scoped out a random bench and decided to eat the contents of our rucksacks.  A chicken lurked.  A hen, in fact.  She was mostly orange with some green feathers going on at the back, she appeared friendly and was very interested in the contents of our rucksacks: we had the feeling that she'd done this before.

Marsh and I had entertained the idea of having chickens, we decided that if we did we'd call them things like Mrs Featherington, the Lady Cluckington-Beake, Miss Peckworthy and my particular favourite: Dame Strut.  Please don't judge us too harshly reader, we live in the country and have limited access to the internet: we make our own entertainment.  In honour of this we dubbed her Mrs Featherington, and despite the fact that she ate a decent amount of our sandwiches and the pastry element of the sausage rolls, and that she pecked Marsh more than once, she cheered us up no end.  Traipsing half a mile through foggy bog was worth it to make the acquaintance of this rather charming chicken.