Weedon Bec (usually just referred to as Weedon) is one of those villages on the canal that for part of my boating life has been a regular stopping off point, then it wasn't on the itinerary for a while...but now it is back!
In it's heyday there were many more pubs in Weedon, but considering it's modest size, five is still quite a good number in this modern era!
My first visit to Weedon was on my very first canal boating trip back in 1980 when Emma Jane was moored at Woodford on the River Nene. This made Weedon a regular stop and we were back there in 1982 and 1984, all before I started taking photos of every pub we visited.
For the first half of the 1990's, Emma Jane was moored on the Southern Grand Union Canal at Cowley Peachey and then Winkwell. So, our summer/autumn jaunts would take us up the Grand Union to Braunston and beyond...and then return the same way (hopefully stopping at different pubs on the way down!)
I can't say that the Globe was our 'go-to' pub, but it was a pleasant enough place to visit and this first time was on the evening of Thursday 24th September 1992.
We were there again on the evening of Wednesday 22nd September 1993, but it was so late that the photo isn't great!
We were back again at lunchtime on Wednesday 31st August 1994.
Largely unchanged, although the Rooms Available sign has been replaced by a hanging basket.
We returned a year later in what would be our last visit for a few years as Emma Jane was returning to her 'old' moorings at Lapworth.
This was on the evening of Wednesday 30th August 1995. Although the signage had changed, I think that everything else was pretty much as before.
For the next few years our boating trips didn't take us through Weedon until we decided to revisit the Grand Union on a trip to Aylesbury and back. This time we stopped at Weedon twice and visited the Globe on both occasions.
Evening of Monday 27th August 2001.
Evening of Tuesday 4th September 2001. Little change, again, but the hanging baskets had bitten the dust!
A few years later, we had a little bit more time than we'd anticipated, so we added Weedon onto our itinerary.
This was on the evening of Sunday 29th May 2005 and still the signage hadn't changed...apart from the missing 'O'.
With the new boat, Peggy Ellen, now being moored at Napton returned on the evening of Friday 19th April 2019 (Good Friday) to be greeted with this scene.
It is a scene that is repeated up and down the land as large pubs/hotels become less viable and are turned into Tesco Express (or Sainsbury's or Co-op or Morrison's...etc). Sad, but inevitable in the modern age.
Looking through the historic pictures on Google Street View, the Globe was largely unchanged in 2009 (earliest picture), boarded up by 2012 (with a new main sign!) and was a Tesco Express by August 2014.
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