#163 The Railway, Ellesmere, Shropshire : 2007 to 2014 (RIP)

The Llangollen Canal is always a pleasant trip, but one we don't do very often. Ellesmere is a regular stopping point, but there are many pubs so we didn't discover them all on our first trip back in 1996.

In 2007 we stopped at Ellesmere both going to and coming back from Llangollen, so we had chance to pop into more hostelries than usual.

One of these was The Railway which we visited at lunchtime on Thursday 30th August 2007. As I remember it was a pretty basic boozer that didn't do food, so we only stayed for one pint and moved on.

We didn't return to the Llangollen Canal until Easter 2014 when we hired a boat from Chirk Marina. When we got to Ellesmere and had a wander around the town, this is the scene we saw.

The Railway was no more. Perhaps not too surprising given the devastation to pubs like The Railway throughout the country since the smoking ban came into force in July 2007, but still sad. This was at lunchtime on Monday 21st April 2014. It is interesting that the signage has been entirely removed, yet the satellite dish remains!