Beers, Boats and Boozers, 2018 No.11

We walked down to the River Lock at the end of the Rufford Armto have a look at what we were in for the following day. This is the outer gate with the tide ebbing. It looked like a fair old flow on and it still wasn't low water.

There were two sets of gates one to keep the canal water in and another, outer gate, to keep the sea water out when there are higher than normal tides that may push the inward facing gates open and potentially flood the surrounding land.

Between the two gates the markers show that there can be 13ft of water in the river. That must go with a real rush when it starts to ebb.

This is looking down river towards the Ribble Estuary, and the way we would be travelling, hopefully the next day.

The weather and tide were a bit 'iffy' so we weren't sure if we would be sailing the next morning. So we went up into town for a look around and tried the second pub in the village, named the Village Inn.

The pub looked like a modern Doctor's Surgery, and without the sign outside I wouldn't have know it was there! Well not quite that bad; but inside it was very plain and stripped back with plain tables and chairs too. It is something that you wont often here me say, and don't tell my wife I have uttered these words, but it needed a few soft furnishings, cushions and the like! There is one large room wrapped around the bar with several areas. There seems to be plenty of food available and the portions looked massive, but they only had two hand pulls on.

I plumped for a pint of the Cumberland, 4.0% from Jennings Brewery. Jennings started brewing in a village between Cockermouth and Keswick in the Lake District in 1828 by a bloke called John Jennings. His Dad was a maltster before him. By 1874 they needed to expand so set up another brewery in Cockermouth at the Castle Brewery. They were using the well water that had previously supplied the Norman Castle, and still do. In 2005 Marston's bought the brewery, and expanded it somewhat. They brew all sorts of beers there now.

Cumberland is described as a Deep Golden Ale and is made with English hops and pale and chocolate malts to give it a bit of base It is dry hopped at the end to give it a little citrus after taste. The pint did have a good colour but had a week head and was a bit of a thin. It got £3-00 so a bit cheaper than we had been paying.

The Chip shop was just behind the pub and we couldn't resist the smell so called and bought our tea to eat after the brief walk down to the moorings. We then just had to see if we would be going in the morning as we had been told that it looked a little 'iffy'.