#035 UPDATE Rose & Castle, Ansty, Warwickshire : 2000 to 2015

When I reviewed our canal trips and my photos I was amazed to find that the first time we ever stopped at Ansty was in 2000, on a week long trip that took us to Coventry. We'd passed by many times but lunchtime on Tuesday 30th May 2000 was the first time we set foot in the Rose & Castle.

As I recall, it was a pub that served very good food, but beyond that I don't remember much else.

Our next visit was another lunchtime stop on Friday 27th August 2004. Again we visited Coventry, but this trip also took us along the Ashby Canal for only our second time.

Now the Rose & Castle was under new management. The exterior had been completely redecorated and, as I recall, inside it had become a bit more 'restauranty', but again the food was good and not expensive.

We were back again on Tuesday 29th May 2007 for another lunchtime treat.

The hanging sign above the front door had disappeared, but a canopy over the outdoor seating at the side of the pub had been installed.

Two years passed and we returned on Monday 25th May 2009 this time for an evening visit!

No apparent changes, but the canopy was extended, no doubt for the smokers.

It was another two years before our next lunchtime stop on Tuesday 31st May 2011.

The only change I could discern was the reappearance of the 'new' hanging sign above the door that first appeared in 2004.

And finally...to our most recent visit at lunchtime (no real surprise there) on Tuesday 1st September 2015.

Minimal changes, although the external lighting appears to be different, the canopy seems to be broken, there's less seating for the smokers and the hanging sign above the front door has redisappeared!

#178 Cuttle Bridge Inn (aka The Kingsley), Kingsbury Road, Birmingham : 1998 to 2015

The first time we moored at The Kingsley was on the evening of Tuesday 2nd September 1997, but it was late, dark and the picture I do have isn't very good (taken with my old 35mm camera) so I haven't scanned it for inclusion.

The Kingsley was something of a godsend for us whenever we were using the Birmingham & Fazeley Canal as it was a brand new Beefeater Inn along a stretch of canal where it was a long time to the next guaranteed eating place.

Our next visit was on the evening of Sunday 21st June 1998 after a five hour afternoon journey from the centre of Birmingham.

Back in 1998 we'd not discovered how close Curdworth was to the canal and so a bright, shiny, new Beefeater (with mooring outside) was the perfect stopping point for us.

We were back again the next year in the evening of Sunday 29th August 1999.

There's really not much extra to add as it was a typical Beefeater of its era.

The next time we were there was on the evening of Thursday 31st May 2001.

 On this one week trip we'd miscalculated the timings and left ourselves only one day to get back to Lapworth. Fortunately there was plenty of light and the journey only took us a total of 10 hours 35 minutes the next day!

We were back again on the evening of Wednesday 18th September 2002 (giving us a more leisurely two days to return to our moorings!).

This was the first visit where we noticed that all was not well with The Kingsley. The restaurant was very quiet, the service was not as good as previously and the bar was populated by exclusively young people and not that many of them! (I realise that last sentence makes me sound like an old fart, but Beefeaters were usually frequented by families and you used to get a very mixed clientele, but this looked and felt very different!)

The next time we stopped was on the evening of Tuesday 31st August 2004 and it was no longer a Beefeater!

It hadn't long been under new management and so wasn't too different from the previous visit.

We were there next on Wednesday 6th September 2006, another evening stop, and it had been completely refurbished.

At first this looked extremely promising, but once we were inside it was obvious that despite the money that had been spent on the place it wasn't thriving.

We did moor outside on the evening of Saturday 26th May 2007, but chose to walk into Curdworth for food and drink! I didn't take a picture. Since this time, we've discovered that Curdworth is a more viable stopping place and the two pubs are within easy walking distance...as long as there are enough mooring spaces!

This next photo was taken on Sunday 11th May 2014 as I happened to be driving by.

This looked like the end for The Kingsley and it was, in a way, but not quite the ending I'd expected!

As we sailed by on the morning of Monday 15th June 2015, this is the scene we came across.

It had reinvented itself as an hotel called the Cuttle Bridge Inn! With its proximity to the NEC, Birmingham and the M42 it is the ideal location for an hotel which should give it a steady trade that wasn't there for a pub/restaurant that you had to drive to.

It is now on our radar as a place to revisit. They have a website and are part of a small chain of hotels in the Midlands around Birmingham.  

#177 Fool's Nook, nr Macclesfield, Cheshire : 2000 to 2015 (RIP?)

Until the past year or so the Macclesfield Canal was a rare treat for us, only to be considered if we were doing the mammoth trip to Manchester and back in a fortnight. And so it was for my only ever visit to the Fool's Nook.

Between Congleton and Macclesfield is a long stretch of canal and the only easily accessible pub along the way was the Fool's Nook making it an ideal lunchtime stop on Thursday 31st August 2000. As I recall it was a cosy, welcoming stop after nearly five hours of travelling through the rain including Bosley Locks.

We did pass this way in 2010, but didn't stop here. Our next visit was in 2014 when this had been our planned lunchtime stop on Sunday 22nd June 2014, but unfortunately it was closed!

At this stage we weren't sure if it was terminal or just a temporary closure, but it meant that we'd had a nearly seven hour journey before some respite (for the 'parched and starving' crew) at the Puss in Boots in Macclesfield!

As we were to learn subsequently, things don't look good for the Fool's Nook and this was the view as we were passing by on Thursday 22nd January 2015.

Still closed and from this link, it would appear that it is unlikely to open again. That's a shame, but not too surprising given its location away from any population centre. For us it meant exploring new possibilities and we found some interesting new pubs that may appear here in the coming years!

#176 Rose & Crown, Warwick : 1998 to 2014

There are lots of pubs in Warwick and, on a short stop, we don't manage to get to all of them. However, in the summer of 1998 our boat Emma Jane broke down (on August Bank Holiday) so we had the opportunity to explore the town more fully. One of the beneficiaries of our misfortune was the Rose & Crown which is just off the Market Square.

 This picture is from the evening of Sunday 30th August 1998. As I recall it was a busy pub that was a bit more upmarket than just a town boozer, but essentially it was a proper pub!

In the intervening years we visited Warwick on many occasions, but never went back to the Rose & Crown, and we still haven't been back inside!

On the evening of Saturday 27th September 2014 we again found ourselves in the centre of Warwick and, for the first time in ages, we ventured into the Market Square with the intention of going back to the Rose & Crown, but this is what we found.

The pub had obviously undergone something of a transformation since our previous visit in 1998. Unfortunately for us, the transformation was still going on and it was closed for further refurbishment. Nevertheless, we still managed to have a good time sitting outside the Tilted Wig (#166) in the unseasonably warm evening weather.

Having done some subsequent research, the Rose & Crown is part of the Peach Pubs Group and is now more of a gastropub than the proper pub it was before. If that means that it will survive for many years to come, then I'm all for it!

#175 Sun Inn, Llangollen, Denbighshire : 2007 to 2014

As previously mentioned, we don't get to Llangollen very often, so we do like to have a look around.

Our first visit was on the evening of Friday 31st August 2007 and we only popped in for a pint. As I recall it was a typical local boozer which are all too rare these days - then it was only a couple of months after the Smoking Ban had come in!

We were back in Llangollen on the evening of Saturday 19th April 2014 and we decided to retrace our steps along the A5 to see what pubs were still there.

We didn't go in this time because the music was a bit loud (and we're becoming old gits who don't like music that's too noisy!!) and they don't do food. I was, however, pleased to see that it had survived, almost completely unchanged in seven years.

It seems to be thriving as a music venue - here's a link for more information.

#174 Hatton Arms (aka The Waterman), Hatton, Warks : 1998 to 2014

As any regular narrowboater will know the lock flight at Hatton on the Grand Union Canal is a daunting, but magnificent challenge. At the top of the hill overlooking the flight sits the Hatton Arms (for many years called The Waterman) which is a welcome sight after several hours hard work coming up the locks or a last chance for refreshment before the arduous journey down the hill!

As far as I can determine this was my first ever visit to The Waterman although we'd passed through Hatton Locks several times in the previous 18 years of canal travelling. This was at lunchtime on Friday 26th June 1998. As usual I don't really recall the visit, but I do remember that it has always been a bit of a more upmarket pub that has always served food.

We paid another visit that year at lunchtime on Friday 11th September 1998, but I don't have a photo for that visit!

Our next visit was at lunchtime on Friday 31st May 2002. The only photo I have is a view from the canal looking up the hill to the pub which you will see below.

We were next at The Waterman at lunchtime on Saturday 16th August 2003.

You may have noted that, so far we'd always stopped here on a Friday. This is because the top of Hatton Locks is about half a day's boating away from our moorings at that time, in Lapworth, making The Waterman, potentially, our last stop on the way home and the first stop on the way out (if we started early enough!) On this occasion it was at the start of a journey that took us to Leicester.

Our next visit was on Friday 1st June 2007, again a lunchtime 'pit stop'!

The Waterman had undergone somewhat of a makeover since our last visit and was one of the first pubs I recall having the pastel exterior that is so common these days. Although the hanging sign still shows a kingfisher! (I also find the 'Canalside Pub' description somewhat amusing as you will see from the later pictures!)

Inside it had gone more upmarket, so much so that you couldn't buy a simple ham sandwich, even though they possessed all of the ingredients and you could order a ham ploughman's!

We were back again, twice, two years later.

This was at lunchtime on Saturday 23rd May 2009 at the start of a short trip around the Midlands. Not much had changed, but the kingfisher was no more!

We returned on the evening of Friday 11th September 2009 after an epic 6 hour afternoon journey from the Two Boats at Long Itchington. That's just the 33 locks, including the 21 at Hatton which we did in 1 hour 55 minutes. This must be a record for a 3-man crew! (I was steering, so I did all the difficult bits!!)

Our next visit marked the end of an era, it was on the evening of Friday 4th November 2011 at the start of what turned out to be our last journey on Emma Jane.

It was also the end of another era as this was our last visit before the name changed.

In the era after Emma Jane, we hired boats around the country which enabled us to visit parts of the canal system we'd never been able to visit previously. However, we were back again at lunchtime on Sunday 28th September 2014.

And what a transformation! Now called the Hatton Arms it had become the full gastropub and was largely unrecognisable compared to the days as The Waterman. However, despite my misgivings, it turned out to be much better than the previously average service offered by The Waterman in its later years!

Earlier, I promised you the view of this 'Canalside' pub, from the canal - here it is over the years.

May 2002

June 2007

May 2009

September 2014

It isn't a particularly long walk up the hill to the pub, but is it close enough to call it 'canalside' - I'm not so sure.

#173 The Vaults, Knowle, West Midlands : 1999 to 2014

This is going to be a short post about a pub that I've only been into once...and I don't remember what it was like inside!

We don't visit Knowle very often on the canal and when we do go there we end up in any/all of the other pubs. Our first (and so far, only) visit was on the evening of Sunday 4th April 1999. It was Easter Sunday and we'd finished our regular Easter trip to Stratford and back. So, rather than drink locally in Lapworth we caught a taxi to Knowle to see what the village had to offer.

Although it has a High Street address, the entrance is on one of the side streets (next door to Loch Fyne restaurant). We must have had a pint in there because in those days I didn't take pictures if we didn't go in, but I have no recollection.

We were once again in Knowle on the evening of Sunday 28th September 2014 and, as we were strolling along the High Street, I took this picture.

To be honest, I wasn't sure if it would still be there, but it appears to have gone from strength to strength. (I discovered, whilst researching this entry, that it has been the Solihull CAMRA Pub of the Year nine times since 1992, most recently in 2013!)

The Vaults now advertises itself as a 'Real Ale Bar' that seems to have filled a niche in the area. Despite the major changes to the outside it is interesting to see that the hanging sign is still the same...even if it has been turned around in the intervening 15 years!