More Press than Aldi....
Well, this is gonna be hard to beat. We have had quite a poor show in the past, but Middleton and its community have more than made up for it. These blogs we've been publishing are about the cards, and the pubs we visit, but this time round, the time leading up to the visit is, to us at least, just as appealing.
Dad did the normal "pre-visit" check list. Contact the pub, search Google, look on facebook for any willing locals that would fancy meeting us for a beer, and maybe have a tale to tell us. Just so I don't miss any details (and he's sat right next to me) I'll let Dad tell you about the people we spoke to before our visit...
Firstly, I rang the pub and spoke to the manageress, Leanne. She turned out to be a diamond. She said she would pass the word around and try and get the locals interested. Then I found Middleton Archaeological Society (MAS) so I posted a message on their facebook page asking if anyone could help. I got a message back from a Peter Alexander (Thanks Peter) who asked the members of MAS for their help and suggested a Mr Geoff Wellens would be a good chap to talk to. I searched facebook and found ONE Geoff Wellens and messaged him on the off chance that HE was the Geoff I was looking for. Over a week went by and I thought it was a dead end. but then I got a message from him and, after a little confusion (he thought I was trying to flog him something), he said he would see what he could do to drum up some interest.
Then I got an e-mail from a Chris Jones who works for the Middleton & North Manchester Guardian, a weekly newspaper in the area. Geoff had contacted him and told him all about us. He asked me to mail him back with a contact number, which I did. He rang me the next day and asked me loads of questions about me, my son, why we were doing this and how our wives felt about it.
Then, a couple of days later I received a mail from Geoff saying that we were in the local paper and it was a good spread. Clint messaged me on facebook Wednesday posting me a link to this....
WE MADE THE FRONT PAGE!!!!! (bottom right)
and inside on page 8.....
and we got a bigger piece than Aldi's new store (page 11), and they're creating 15 new jobs! How mad's that??
As you can imagine, as soon as we saw this, we couldn't wait to get there. And this time, as I promised in the last blog, we were staying the night, so we could thoroughly enjoy the establishments board of fare. By the way, being on a budget, we booked a Travelodge just outside the town, and its a good job we aren't reviewing hotels, because this one was a right... (Careful Clint!) sorry Dad.... anyway, it weren't the best.
Us en route...
While we were prepping for the trip, maybe Thursday night, We decided that, being as though, A, we were on a budget, and B, we like to take in the sights, that we would walk the 2 miles from the hotel from hell to Ye Olde Boars Head (what a mistake! It looks flat on Google). So, as all great explorers do, we Google mapped our route. And we noticed something VERY interesting....
Not sure if we mentioned it in this blog, but our surname is Gardner. And to be more specific, Dads full name is Stephen Leonard Gardner (cheers Mum) (lol). On our virtual tour of Google Middleton, we spotted, just around the corner from Ye Olde Boars Head....
Which, was just around the corner from....
But to get to these, and Ye Olde Boars Head, we had to pass....
Although, truth be told, we may not have just walked by that last one...
Eventually we made it to Ye Olde Boars Head and met the lovely Leanne, landlady for the past five years, who was very helpful and gave us a tour of the pub and our FIRST Ye Olde Innseekers FREE PINT!!!! (and our first interesting tale, about herself and her family) despite trying to get the function room ready for a 50th birthday party and herself ready for a family evening out.
Next time we'll go into more detail and bring you more tales of the inn-expected (get it??)
Cheers for now
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