Stalybridge Buffet Bar

The station bars featured in the last post were all great places to visit, but this was the one that I was really keen to get to.

Jumping off the train there's no need to worry about ticket barriers here - you can head straight from the platform into the pub.  
It's probably a good job I don't live in Stalybridge and commute by train.  I'd never be home on time.

No boozing on the platforms!

Station Buffet Bar (Stalybridge Railway Station, SK15 1RF - web)
Four ale aficionados from Leeds beat me off the train and into the Buffet Bar.
There they were, trying to decide which beers to order, cameras out, getting in the way and snapping pictures of the bar from every which angle.

Aren't ale drinkers prancing around pubs taking pictures annoying?

Oh.

There was a licensed bar at the station as far back as 1860, with an 1870 record of a chap called Hugh Toney who was sentenced to seven days hard labour for being drunk and disorderly and stealing a glass worth sixpence.

Its time as a destination pub for rail enthusiasts and beer drinkers began in 1997 when it was saved from closure, filled with enough railway artifacts to keep a small museum happy, and the cellar stocked with micro brewery ales.

My luggage in the background - must really pack lighter for these pub-ticking trips

On the bar was a tough choice of beers including offerings from North Riding, Tim Taylor's, Brass Castle and Titanic.
I ended up with the oddly named 'Glamour Muscles' (two things I have none of), a murky gluten free 5.3% IPA by Shiny, which was most enjoyable.

I took this on a stroll through the wonderful rooms in the buffet bar, from the conservatory added at the front, to the rear room which was once the first class ladies waiting room.
It's a fantastic place that I'm happy to have made it to.

So, what else does anyone come to Stalybridge for, other than the Buffet Bar?

Perhaps for Paul's Tool Emporium, "the best tool shop in the North of England, probably".

Maybe to watch the mighty Stalybridge Celtic play.

Visit the place where 'Long Way to Tipperary' was written?

Or for a pint in the pubs with the longest and shortest names in the country...

Just under the railway lines is the Q...

And two doors away is The Old Thirteenth Cheshire Astley Volunteer Rifleman Corps Inn..

The shutters give a clue that the pub was shut when I visited

Heading into the centre of town, I decided to call into one of the two micro pubs, picking Bridge Beers on a pedestrianised shopping street.

Bridge Beers (55 Melbourne Street, Stalybridge, SK15 2JJ - web)
"You've taken pictures of the other pubs in town and now you've ended up in the best", said the chap propping up the bar.
Turns out he'd been following me down Market Street and probably shaking his head in despair at the odd chap ahead of him snapping pub photographs.

"What brings you here" he asked.  "Just having a mooch?"
There's a word I haven't heard in a long time and I like the idea of having a mooch and will use it again.

Bridge Beers is part bottle shop, part micro, converted from a hairdressers in 2016.
There's a lounge on the first floor, but I stuck downstairs where there are just a couple of seats and the friendly, chatty locals perched along the bar.

Beers were served straight from the barrel with just a couple on offer today from the local Bridge Beers Brewery.  I was pleased to see a 5% 'Dark Ruby Mild' which was a superb pint.

The original Thirteenth Rifleman... pub sign is displayed in Bridge Beers, stretching around the walls.  I was told that the pub I'd photographed wasn't the original Rifleman - that was a short way away on Astley Street and closed in 2015, with the current incarnation being opened 3 years later.

As it wasn't the original I wasn't so sorry to miss it.  But with time before the next train I figured I may as well have a pint in the pub with the shortest name in the UK.

Q Inn (3 Market Street, Stalybridge, SK15 2AL - web)
Y'know, this seems like a pretty easy record to beat.
The Coach and Horses in Banbury was renamed '4' for a short while before common sense prevailed.

Sadly the tourists weren't flocking in today to visit a record breaker.
No-one was flocking in.  Just me, looking lonely, sipping my pint of Hyde's Original.  Which was probably the first out the beer line and suffering a little bit for it.

It's a nice little pub, so a shame not to see it when it's busy.

Let's finish with my complete failure to photograph the inside of the Q...

That's enough pubs on the railway for the time being.
Next up: Prop Up the Bar does football in Manchester