18/11/22 - The Good Beer Guide Pubs of Eccles, Patricroft and Monton

Good Beer Guide Ticks - #758-761

Three areas of Greater Manchester that can be easily combined into a 4 Good Beer Guide Pub Crawl.  After a successful mission, I return to my house-sitting duties and 2 things happen.

1. My Untappd notifications suggest that I was brave to wander this area at night.
2. With no conventional TV, I browse Youtube.  A laugh with Manchester's finest, Paul Calf, seems in order.  My favourite scene - the Shitty Shoe'd Bastard routine - is a must watch.

It's only filmed in pub one of the night, the Lamb Hotel, Eccles.

To get there involves a busy number 22 bus to the Trafford Centre.  The regulars spot an amateur using Google Maps to work out where to get off and its moments before an old dear wheedles my destination from me.  She shares the news with the rest of the bus, to which the general consensus is "you don't want to go there on a Friday night, it will be dead".

I alight with the advice - "Go to spoons instead"

My night time photo a blurry mess.  A daytime one found on Flickr.

Of course the locals are correct. A multi-roomed heritage pub of national importance, the only other patrons are blocking access to the serving hatch. Once that is navigated, I try the TV room. It's always too soon for Wings Xmas songs on a music channel.  

I move onto a function room to ponder on where they are going wrong with their business model.

All by myself to think.... 

...... dogs cannot read

I'm off to spoons for company.  And Tea.

Lots of similarities with my next tick.  Its a Heritage Pub.  Its Holts.  It has an interior of national importance.  

External photos rendered impossible due to a smoking relay race, where a lighter is handed between contestants for the next puffer to stand in the doorway.

Resort to a sneaky side shot

This is a man's pub.  For men.  The only men not playing crib are complaining about the beer quality. The bitter is not in peak form tonight.

Looked OK to me.  Maybe they have exacting standards

Periods of silence are punctuated by killer one-liners.   "Has Mike been in tonight?" is met with "No, he says the beer is shit".

If I had been invited to make up a crib team, I would have stayed all night.

The Queens Arms can be easily seen from the other side of the railway tracks. Getting there proves to be more problematic. Down a ramp, up another and back on yourself and I am met by a gasper who tells me "I wouldn't bother mate, there's only two other people in".

A shame. Friday night and the quiet tones of Radio Nice, with the gentle ticking of a clock, only reminded me of childhood visits to the "boring Nan". Places like this cannot even be covering the heating costs and you wonder how much longer they will be available.

But why is it called the Queens Arms?

Queen Vic visited Salford in 1851.  They put up a photo.

After three Heritage pubs of national importance, only a micro can make the night's ticking complete.

Into Monton, where all the action is. Gangs of youth seem to be heading to a Turkish restaurant that does cocktails. I am heading for a converted shop. You do not need an external photo, for you know what a shop looks like.

This Micro concentrates on local keg, with a couple of cask but no Belgian. The bar is busy with punters that have misjudged the strength of the offerings.  At one point, a man moves stools outside on the pavement. The bar owner doesn't complain. He just waits for it to finish and then goes outside to collect them back in. The perils of being a +6% purveyor of hooch.

Seven Brothers Juicy IPA and reading material

A micro before stool re-arrangement

Sign seemed apt.  The house I am sitting has a roof leak.  And it hasn't stopped raining yet.