On the Wigan Ale Trail

Day two in Wigan, as we awoke to a thick mist which had descended on the town overnight and obscured my view of the car park from the Premier Inn window.
Our Oxford quartet convened at a sensible hour and trekked to the surprisingly busy and hectic Wetherspoon's for a leisurely breakfast and several coffee refills.

By quarter-past 11 I realised The Anvil had been open for 15-minutes already.
What were we playing at?! 

The Anvil (Dorning Street, Wigan, WN1 1ND)
This is a very proper-looking town centre pub, a big red brick affair with Tudor gables, located on a corner close to the bus station.
It had a fair few punters in for a pre-noon Friday, spread out over three drinking areas from the quiet end with a wall of CAMRA awards to the bright corner room with big TV and multiple satellite boxes. 

The eight hand pulls served up some big brand brews alongside the local Moorhouse 'White Witch', and Chorley micro Ben's Brewery 'Mosaic'.  I picked the 4.4% IPA from Heywood, Greater Manchester brewery Phoenix, an easy-going first beer of the day. 

We took our drinks though to a table in the corner with red leather cushioned bench seating, dumpy stools and some fine battered beer mats.  Wigan rugby and football memorabilia adorning the walls, a chap read his paper, and a white wine-drinking lady pampered her poodle on the seat next to her.

There was a lesser-seen pairing of Maiden's Number of the Beast with cricket on the TV.  Actually, the music was very ROCK for early doors.  None of the clientele looked like they wanted to hear Metallica's 'One', not that they were taking much notice of it.  I guess you need a bit of metal on the playlist when your pub is called Anvil.

Next to be marked off on the Ale Trail leaflet was a nearby micro in an alleyway in the Victorian Quarter.
It's been a while since my pub pictures were let down by scaffolding...

Tap 'n' Barrel (16 Jaxon's Court, Wigan, WN1 1LR)
We were afforded a friendly cheerful welcome at this former local award winner where we found a solid Lakes and Dales cask line-up of Hawkshead 'Pale', Abbeydale 'Deception', and Wensleydale 'Semer Water'.

One of our party skipped the sensible ales and delved into the fridge for a lunchtime 8.4% cherry chocolate imperial stout.

  

Seating in the ground floor room was limited to stools lining one wall, with the bar taking up a good bit of the space. There are tables upstairs, but who sits upstairs? So we gravitated to the bright patio area, covered and sealed to keep the cold out, heaters and old guitars attached to the walls.
The soundtrack was very 00's indie rock, with a bit of Bastille and Dandy Warhols.  John may have an encyclopaedic knowledge of Thin Lizzy but was surprisingly blank on recognising The Killers when not one but two of their tracks drifted out the speakers.

The gents WC featured a good cistern sticker collection, although I'm not sure how or when 1.FC Kӧln found their way to Wigan?

After visiting those couple of venues we decided to make our way back to the Beer Festival.
This was Friday's vintage transport which put a smile on our faces, even if it was overtaken by a small child in an electric toy jeep on the bus station concourse.

After a mellow and easy-going afternoon session at the beer festival, we found ourselves back in the centre of Wigan.

A short walk from the bus station took us into a quieter part of town, where our next destination was a craft bar in the former British Legion building.

Real Crafty (9 Upper Dicconson Street, Wigan, WN1 2AD)
This was the Greater Manchester regional pub of the year in 2022 and appears to be the place to get your unusual Untappd check-ins.  There were 30-or-so taps lining the back of the bar, necessitating some staring at the TV screens as the beer listing looped around.
Ooooh!  Cheesecakes reimagined as a beer, you say?  From Nottingham's Neon Raptor?  That'll do.
The 8% 'Love Taker' pastry stout may not have been the most sensible pick on this long day out, but it was quite marvellous. 

I'm usually wary of any bar with an office-like suspended ceiling, but the beer selection more than excused this feature.

Should you prefer to stick with the cask in Real Crafty, Marble, Ossett and Wigan Brewhouse provided the selection on this visit.  This is somewhere I'd happily linger for longer on a less full-on day.

But this was a full-on day and we were soon making a half-mile walk north along the side of Mesnes Park, on our way to another of Wigan's current Good Beer Guide entries.

 

Sherrington's (57 Kenyan Road, Wigan, WN1 2DU)
This was doing a roaring Friday evening trade with all tables on the ground floor and outside on the patio on a balmy March evening taken.  That relegated us to sitting upstairs away from the action, which probably dampened my enthusiasm for the place a little.  It certainly scuppered my photography, although no denying that the ale selection is fairly satisfying.

 

Cask ales on the bar were local Wily Fox 'Crafty Fox' and 'Dublin Up', alongside Bowness 'Swan Blonde' and Fyne 'Jarl'.
A half of Crafty Fox and a half of the keg 7% Rivington 'Monte Carlo's and El Dorado's' was my order.  That'll be the strongest beer on offer - I'll never learn. 

Gareth had spotted that we'd passed another venue on our Wigan Ale Trail leaflet on the walk to Sherrington's, although it had cunningly changed its name to confuse us.
Docs Alehouse had become the Yellow Monkey... 

The Yellow Monkey (85 Mesnes Street, Wigan, WN1 1QJ)
We entered to the sound of Billy Idol; two dogs provided trip hazards; and there was a buzz of jovial conversation in this converted shop unit turned micro pub.

Cask ales on offer were a second sighting in a row of local Wily Fox 'Crafty Fox' and Fyne Ales 'Jarl'.  Being as I'd just sampled the local brew, I opted for a pint of Argyll's finest, served in tip-top condition.

The two dogs greeting us on entry - or any of those on the patio at Sherrington's for that matter - were no match for this fella called Bobby, who'd made himself comfortable at the back of the Yellow Monkey.
No you ask him if he wouldn't mind moving so we can sit on the sofa...

I really enjoyed our time in this laid-back micro, chatting to the dog owners ("How much does Bobby eat? A shit-load"), enjoying the beer, stroking dogs and being treated to a decent music playlist.

That left us with a walk through the dark streets back into town, where we figured we'd tick off The Raven from the Ale Trail leaflet.

The Raven (5 Wallgate, Wigan, WN1 1LD)
Ossett 'Silver King' was my pick here, the other choices being Wainwright and Plum Porter.  This may be a more pedestrian selection of ales than the places we'd been earlier (and the Bay City Rollers 'Give a Little Love' made for less appealing background music) but the Raven was well worth a visit.  It featured some great green tiling on the corridor and wooden panelling around the seats we took in the front room, renovated and restored in 2012. 
Not that I dared take any pictures, having been quizzed by the staff about why I'd snapped a photo of the pub outside.

We still somehow found our way back to the John Bull Chophouse for a rock-sound-tracked end of the evening and that extra pint of Thwaites that would guarantee a fuzzy head in the morning.

Next up: one more Holt's heritage pub in Wigan and a quick side-trip on the train to St Helens.

Wigan - Beer Festival, Bass and Pie 'n' Mash

Four go on an adventure to Wigan, in search of historic pubs and fine ales and a beer festival in a leisure centre.
We were making good time under blue skies on the M6, the only delay encountered being the predictable traffic jam circumnavigating Oxford, some 5-minutes after setting off.  The rock playlist was curated by the man behind the wheel, Chairman John, who was going into great detail about when Richie Blackmore reached his peak.

I was spared the 8 minutes plus of Stargazer as we reached the final leg and needed to listen to the sat nav directions to deliver us to our car park by the hotel.

🕧12:30 - time to head to the Swan and Railway...

Swan and Railway Hotel (80 Wallgate, Wigan, WN1 1BA)
This is a great-lookin' red brick pub, built in 1898 by W.E.V. Compton.  There is a pleasing mosaic floor displaying the hotel name in the doorway, with options of heading right into the narrow bar or straight to a corridor, with serving hatch, Victorian tiles, some great glasswork, staircase, and routes to two other rooms.

Along the bar were seven hand pumps, serving Bank Top 'Dark Mild' (first beer thumbs-up from one of our party), a stout from Brewsmith (I'll be back for that before closing time), pale ales from Pinnacle and Beerworks, a fruity collab between Ossett and Vault City, Black Sheep best bitter, and Bass🔺.
A great choice, but I hadn't had a pint of Bass in 2025, so started the day with two of 'em.

And a pie..

The only problem with the Swan and Railway was the danger that we may never leave.  After all, we had a fine selection of beers, a seat by the fire, sport on the TV, and a pie menu. 

But we're more intrepid than that - and figured we'd be back.  As it was, we met some of the team from the pub in the beer festival later and made a couple of revisits, getting chatting to the owners about their dedication to Bass and their recent acquisition of the Woodman in Birmingham.  We also got a tip about sleeping with onions in your socks when you're coming down with a rotten cold...not tried and tested yet.

We didn't have far to go to the next destination - under the railway bridge, turn left and into the first arch.

Wigan Central (Arch No.1 and 2, Queen Street, Wigan, WN1 4DY)
The station-style signage and giant blue locomotive on the window give a clue that they've embraced the railway theme here.  They really have...railway carriage seating to one side, a bar in a bit of rolling stock, signs and historic pictures throughout, and wooden signals on the tables to indicate you're ready for service (didn't see this in action, so it may be a throwback to 20/21).

The Bank Top 'Signal' is the house beer (rebadged 'Flat Cap', I believe), alongside five other cask ales and some craft keg lines that I didn't even look at on this visit (again, we'd be back, drinking murky pale ale as a DJ souped up 80's classics at a thunderous volume in the side room on Saturday evening).  On a quieter Thursday afternoon I picked a 4.2% pale called 'Outside the Frame' from the nearby Black Lodge Brewery.

Leaving Wigan Central, we ambled up Wallgate as far as one of the pubs on the local Ale Trail, a one-time Wigan Good Beer Guide Entry.

The Berkeley (27-29 Wallgate, Wigan, WN1 1LD)
Heading straight to the bar we found four hand pumps serving 'Wainwright', 'Cumbria Way', and Moorhouses 'Blonde Witch' and 'White Witch'.
The staff member was efficient and no-nonsense...
"What's the difference between the White Witch and Blonde Witch?"
"They're both popular".
You'd have been bold to ask for more details.  Or for a taster.

We took our picks of the Moorhouse beers to a high table in the centre of the pub, asking ourselves 'how is this not a Wetherspoon's?  The sprawling size of the place, the carpet, the layout and style of the furniture were all JDW-like, as was the impressive mid-afternoon crowd. 
Looking above us at the closed upper floor, we pondered if the balconies and unusual pillars rearranged themselves overnight in a Hogwarts style...I fear we were knocking back the ale too fast and talking nonsense already - and we still had a beer festival to get to. 

The clock had ticked past post-pandemic hotel check-in time (it's never going back to 2pm is it?).  So we drank up, and got ourselves settled in our lodgings.  A thirty minute 'freshening up' break - cup of tea, spot of a daytime TV quiz show, a glance at the local map to see how far it was to the pubs I wanted to visit - then we were back on the move. 
A walk up Millgate took us to Winstanley Gardens and the Face of Wigan...

We were heading to the John Bull Chop House, which is situated on a cobbled lane to the side of the gardens.  Although I suspect we'd have diverted here anyway as soon as we heard Master of Puppets playing from the speaker in the doorway.

John Chop Brewhouse (2 Coopers Row, Market Place, Wigan, WN1 1PQ)
This is very much the rock pub to complement our in-car soundtrack on our journey up the motorway.   As such, we ended up back here late on both Friday and Saturday nights - wild rumours may suggest that I did a little dance at some point.  Cracking music and a great atmosphere when it was busy with customers in the night-time.  Here, however, is the early doors photograph...

Timothy Taylor 'Boltmaker', Thwaites 'Gold', or Thwaites 'Brewhouse' were the cask ale choices on our visit.  The malty, treacly, 4.3% American brown ale Brewhouse was delicious.  A few of these were sunk on our consecutive visits. 

We'd come to Wigan because of the beer festival with an enticing list of beers, so figured it was about time we made the effort to get there.
We hopped aboard the vintage bus which had been laid on as a shuttle between the town centre and the Robin Park Leisure Centre.

Situated between a retail park and Wigan's football stadium, the leisure centre was an odd venue for the festival, with non-beer-quaffing folk doing healthy sporty stuff and posters advertising various medical clinics including, ironically, free liver scans.

 

The bar was split into light and dark halves - the dark side for me on Thursday evening, with a switch to the paler stuff on Friday.  I started with Vocation 'Birthday Cake' milk stout from the wooden cask, complemented Clay Brow's 'The Hooded Monk' as having the best pump clip of the festival, and spent a while trying to decide whether or not I actually liked the draft red wine barrel aged 11% old ale from Romanian brewery Blackout.  Yep, this was a festival that really did the craft keg justice.
Top marks for the value pie and peas available on the catering stall which nourished me well for two visits.

Wrapping things up/running out of tokens, we caught a bus back to the centre and popped back into the Swan & Railway for a nightcap that I probably didn't need.

I'll be back in Wigan for the next post as we continued to explore the pubs of the town.

Stockport Pub Explorations

Stockport County are on the rise, now crowned champions of League Two.  Local indie rockers Blossoms have hit the top spot of the UK album charts several times. 
And National Geographic have named one of the pubs among the 12 best in the country!

Time for Prop Up the Bar to make a return visit to explore Stockport.

We set off from our Macclesfield Travel Lodge base, ready and waiting on the platform, next to the brutal concrete staircases of the station bridge by 11:15am.

The Northern Rail service was overcrowded, our carriage dominated by a group of twenty-something lads 'n' lasses on their way to go curling in Manchester.  Which obviously requires a four pack of supermarket booze to be consumed on the train as preparation.
Is going curling a hip thing to do these days?

The trouble with visiting Stockport on Easter Sunday was that absolutely all the attractions we may have liked to visit were closed for the day.  So we just strolled up the road from the station to take a picture of the town hall.

We didn't brave the neighbouring Town Hall Tavern, even though we were spot-on time for the landlord unlocking the door as we passed.  Interesting decorations in the first floor windows...

Instead, our first pub of the day was the Heritage listed Swan With Two Necks.  The walk to it through the modern shopping streets was eerily quiet on one of only two days of the year that almost all retail takes a day off.

The Swan With Two Necks (36 Princes Street, Stockport, SK1 1RY)
So it was little surprise to find that the pub was also very quiet.  Just one old boy in the lobby who looked a little like he may not have left when they called last orders the evening before, plus a couple of chaps in the front room, known as the vault.

A Robinson's house, our beer choice was 'Dizzy Blonde', 'Unicorn', or 'Old Tom'.
I really wanted an Old Tom on cask, but it seemed a tad irresponsible at midday, so I stuck to the Unicorn bitter.  

We took our drinks into the wonderful snug at the end of the bar-corridor, sunshine through the skylight brightening the place up; the leather button-back bench seating proving comfortable.
A nice touch is the old bell pushes still visible behind the seating.

What a lovely pub!
Glasses emptied and returned to the bar, we took a short stroll down the road and made our way to a second Heritage pub in quick succession.

The Arden Arms (23 Millgate, Stockport, SK1 2LX)
Stepping into this Grade II listed pub, you're in a passageway with a staircase, glazed bar to the side, and doors leading off to a cosy-looking front room, outdoor patio, and dining room to the back.
The staff were in full-on Sunday lunch mode, asking us if we wanted to eat, which we did.  When we said we'd rather eat in the bar than in the dining room area, we were offered a seat in the snug.  Which is a little bit special as it's a hidden snug.
This is accessed by being invited to pass through the bar itself.  According to the Heritage pubs description, this is only one of four such snugs in the country.

Okay, so it's also where the staff hang their coats, and where the fridge, coffee machine, and pub stereo are, spoiling the ambiance a little bit.
But the soft red cushioned bench seating around the sides of this small room is wonderful, the sun streaming through the frosted windows, the old couple sat next to us complementing the Sunday lunch.

Sadly the Old Tom on tap had finished (should have started with it after all, shouldn't I) so I had a second pint of 'Unicorn' - on great form - alongside some good pub grub served with super efficiency.

Pub number 3 was another short walk up the hill to the market square...

There are a fair few drinking establishments facing the impressive Victorian market hall and I was a little sad we didn't get to try the Sam Smith's Old Boars Head.  I was told we couldn't visit everywhere.
In a run of three pubs close together on the market square, we started in the Bakers Vaults, a stand-alone, bright and airy place with tall ceilings and big arched windows.  

Bakers Vaults (Market Place, Stockport, SK1 1EU)
The pub was built in the 19th century, replacing a 16th century inn called the George & Dragon, and is apparently on the site where Stockport castle once stood. 

You can do a full circle behind the big bar counter, with a lounge area to the rear.  A big chunk of the front room was taken up by Pete Churchman and his band setting up their gear to provide some Sunday afternoon "rock and blues, folk and fun".

My apologies to Mr Churchman for missing his set, but there were a good number of customers arriving and picking the best spots to see him.
This is a Robinson's pub but, unlike the last two, there was a substantial choice of guest beers here to enable a change from the Unicorn.
I haven't seen a Burton Bridge beer for some time, so picked their strong 'Festival Ale'.

Just a few paces down the street was a bar called Thread which has only recently properly re-opened.

Thread (22 Market Place, Stockport, SK1 1EU)
Between 2018 and 2023 this was a bar called Project 53 which made a brief appearance in the Beer Guide.  After closing in that guise, it reopened on weekends only, but now seems to have extended into a full-time (or as full-time as anywhere is these days) operation.  The name Thread comes from the one-time use of the building as a tailors shop.

Something gave me the expectation that this was going to a crafty micro, so it came as a surprise to find that this was a big space, stretching way back from the front room.

We received a fantastically friendly welcome from a staff member happy to chat about the beers and inviting us to take them out front (not quite warm enough yet), sit anywhere we liked, or head right to the back of the place for the views.
We did the views, which were very rooftop orientated.

The cask options at Thread were from Brew York and Stancill Barnsley Bitter.  But I have to admit I was tempted straight to the keg taps with an interesting selection of Belgian beers, or Dutch for my pick...

We sank into big leather sofas by the back window, music veering from rare groove jazz to Pink Floyd and Hendrix during our time there.
We didn't need to build up much energy to move on, stepping out of Thread and straight into the next door neighbour...

Angel Inn (20 Market Place, Stockport, SK1 1EY)
Surprisingly, this has only been open in its current form since 2018, having been transformed from redundant shopping premises.  But head back to the 1700's and you would found this building operating as the Angel Inn.  The current patterned white facade was completed in 1886 when local brewers Bells took over, looking after the Angel until a couple of years prior to its closure in 1951.

The Angel had five cask ales to pick from six hand pumps when we visited.  A stout or pale from Sussex brewery Only With Love, Beartown pale, Brew York 'Juice Forsyth', and - my choice - the lovely Bank Top 'Port O' Call'.

With a choice of areas to sit in, we took drinks down a couple of steps beyond the bar into a sunken area with sofas and fireplace.  Where we were entertained with the best soundtrack of the day, covering New Order, The Cure, Nirvana, and Martha & the Muffins.

Next up was a pub I was really looking forward to, a recent Stockport CAMRA pub of the year, and winner of the Manchester cider pub of the year award a couple of times.

The Petersgate Tap (19a Petersgate, Stockport, SK1 1EB)
This has the vibe of a large busy micro, having opened in 2016 in a unit which used to be a betting shop.
I thought it was great.  A good crowd of customers in - a bit of luck in a table becoming free just when we needed it to - overwhelming choice of beer which isn't very conducive to a pub crawl.
Normally I raise a frown at any pub/bar with a suspended ceiling, but the display of old brewery trays on the wall made up for that here.

I'd enjoyed the stout in the Angel, so stuck with the dark stuff here with a Wily Fox 'Dublin' Up'.

Right...from one local award winner to another.
You'll find the Magnet back on the A6, just up the hill from the shopping centre, on the way to Heaton Norris. 

The Magnet (51 Wellington Road North, Stockport, SK4 1HJ)
This is the Stockport pub that has been named by National Geographic as one of the 12 best in the country.
Fair to say I liked it here a lot. Although I'm of the opinion that no self-respecting pub enthusiast would be able to narrow their 'best of' list to 12.
The Magnet has various different spaces and a good Sunday afternoon crowd giving it a bustling cheery atmosphere when we visited.

 

And a great beer choice - their website advertises 14 casks and 12 kegs.  I randomly picked the Briggs Signature Beers 'Metal', then returned to the bar when I spotted they had a cask Sureshot beer available (having had their beer on tap at the brewery the previous day).
And the pizza from the stall in the back yard wasn't half bad too...

So that was our pub explorations done for the day.

Well...just about.  We found our return train cancelled when we got back to the station.
I briefly pondered if we'd got enough time before the next service to get back into the centre for an Old Tom, but instead we headed into the bar at the foot of the glass-fronted blocks next to the station.

Bask (20 Railway Road, Stockport, SK1 3SW)
As you can see from the picture, this is a thoroughly modern bar with industrial ceiling, spotlights and speakers suspended from it, TV screens located at frequent intervals on posts between the big windows.
The drinks range is very mainstream, with Beavertown looking to be the beer of choice for most folk.

I picked the keg Bask Best Bitter, none-the-wiser as to who brews this for them.  It did the job for a quick delayed-train beer whilst I tried not to prolong the stay by getting hooked on Bochum v Darmstadt on the TV.

The next train arrived on time and whisked us back to Macclesfield in time for a visit to the Castle.
Stockport had made for a great day out - we'll be back again - hopefully on a day when Runaway Brewery and the Hat Museum are open.