Walking. Gossip. Travel.

Category: Keighley

  • Keighley – The Livery Rooms

    Keighley – The Livery Rooms

    I wasn’t going to write about the Wetherspoons in Keighley, hence no photo of the front of the pub. But I’m in a good mood (although I’m not sure what relevance that is to anything…..) and it’ll help me remember that I’ve been here….

    Firstly, the building itself, I’ll copy the history of the pub from JD Wetherspoon’s own web-site:

    “At the end of the 19th century, ‘first-class, sprung carriages pulled by grays or bays’ were available for hire from the livery stables which stood next to and partly on the site of this Wetherspoon pub. North Street was laid out in 1786, but was not developed until the 1880s, when it was widened and the first of the large imposing buildings was constructed. In the 1890s, this site was partly occupied by a cabman’s shelter at the front and the town hall livery stables at the rear. The stables’ offices were converted into the Regent cinema in 1920, later to become a bingo hall.”

    This is Keighley in 1900 and the Livery Rooms is located where it says ‘hall’ and there’s pretty much nothing else left today other than the free library. The public baths have gone, the Mechanics’ Institute has gone and the streets at the top left of the map have all been swept away.

    Anyway, back to the modern day. I went for a half pint of Broomstick Bitter from Moorhouse’s Brewery, which was well kept, at the appropriate temperature (my friend Nathan always likes me to point that out) and had a perfectly pleasant taste. Service was friendly, although I was inwardly moderately annoyed as there were two of us at the bar when the barman came along and I mentioned the other customer was first, so he correctly served him. After that, he then went to serve someone who had just arrived at the bar, but I was pleased that this new potential interloper at the bar told the barman he wasn’t next, so I was served in turn.

    The pub was unclean and the staff were ignoring the issue, which I mention solely because I routinely note how clean pubs and bars are, so it seems reasonable to mention the reverse. The carpet was flooded with litter and tables weren’t routinely cleared, although the pub was arguably over-staffed. This ties in with the reviews on-line, which are a fair bit below the average I’d expect for a JD Wetherspoon pub, so there are probably some problems here. Anyway, I should have better things to write about than the relative performance of different JD Wetherspoon outlets. Although I probably don’t since I’m writing this. But, I digress.

    Although on the subject of reviews, I noted this:

    “Manger, I am appalled with your service, my daughter and her friends came for tea as they haven’t seen each other since March because of lockdown and you seem to think it’s okay to say they can’t sit in and eat a meal because they are underage.”

    I’ve heard this before when a group of kids come in and try and get served, even if it’s soft drinks, as if it’s somehow not a pub but a McDonald’s. Slightly odder when the parent goes on-line and gives a low rate because the “manger” is following licensing rules….

    I liked this review:

    “We decided to go in at 11.45 as they were closing soon. Just before midnight ovbiously last orders was shouted. I said i’m not getting another as I had about a 1/4 of a pint left. I think we’d had 3 pints whilst there. Straight after within minutes the shift manager Natalie started shouting can you drink up please as she walked past with another staff member Jake. Both looked very stressed out. I merely said ‘Don’t we get 20 minutes drinking up time?’ Which was replied with a very curt no. The next think the friend I hadn’t seen for years started shouting ‘Let’s start a revolution.’ Jake angrily said to the shift manageress ‘Barr them!!!’ I couldn’t believe this, that kid when he first started there a couple of years ago was a star and I told him you’ve ace with the customers. But that night he was a very angry young man. I told my friend to shut up and led him out quickly giving him a bollocking cos they will bar you and that’s my fav pub”

    I’m with the pub as soon as I saw “started shouting”….. But I’m like that, I can’t be dealing with raucous behaviour in pubs.

    What I can’t complain about is being charged £1 for half a pint of decent real ale, so that was very lovely. Friendly staff, but all a bit rickety at the edges and given the times in which we live, the pub should have been at least a bit cleaner.. The pub opened in 2004, but the chain spent £830,000 under two years ago to modernise the venue and that really wasn’t evident and it’s a shame the pub was in a state given that investment. As an aside, it would be remiss of me (even though it wasn’t the pub’s fault) not to mention for the sake of the historic record the horrendous event that received national attention in 2009……

  • Northern Rail and LNER : Keighley to London King’s Cross

    Northern Rail and LNER : Keighley to London King’s Cross

    After what I thought was a successful LDWA groups’ weekend I meandered down the hill into Keighley to get the train back to London. Here’s the delightful railway station, with the main entrance to the centre of the building (which is entirely logical), but the gateway to the right leads to the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway, a heritage line which goes from Keighley to Oxenhope via towns such as Haworth. There has been some talk of trying to bring the line back into commuter use, since it is entirely complete and linked into the current network, but no real progress had been made on that.

    I went to the ticket office to collect my ticket from the machine, but there was a queue and so I asked the man at the empty ticket desk if I could collect it there. He helpfully answered:

    “Well, we can do that, but we prefer not to”.

    Really bloody helpful. Anyway, he did print out the ticket and seemed otherwise friendly, but the failing here is the operator Northern not putting in enough ticket machines (I only saw one).

    This station was built in 1883 and replaced a previous station constructed in 1847 which was a short distance away over the road.

    My ticket was to leave Keighley at 17:33 and get into Leeds at 18:05, before going from Leeds at 18:15 and arriving into King’s Cross at 20:28. I’m quite risk averse when travelling so arrived into Keighley railway station early and saw an earlier train arrive which was going into Leeds. I decided I’d go and ask the train guard if I could get on the earlier one to prevent a misconnect (although the real reason is that I wanted to ensure I got a seat on the London train). He answered:

    “Yes and no”.

    I love precision. He said that if I had got on and not asked, the answer was no and I’d be charged a penalty fare. However, he thanked me for asking him and said that I could board and I had his permission to use that service. That caused a slight commotion later on when revenue protection got on, but the guard was true to his word and confirmed my ticket was valid.

    Anyway, they’re clearly very hot on fare avoidance on Northern, they seem to regularly check tickets and I’d advise definitely checking with a guard before doing anything slightly different…..

    This meant that I got into Leeds a good hour before my train to London departed and I was pleased to discover the train actually departed from Leeds, so this would be the first stop.

    Around 30 minutes before the departure time, the Intercity train slides into the platform.

    I then stood outside the train door for ten minutes waiting to be let in. I spend a lot of my time standing outside the doors of public transport.

    Full marks though to LNER for actually having logical carriage letters. Sometimes they’re something similar to A, Z, H, 5, 9, G, P and my ticket says carriage C. This time though I was in carriage E and that was easy to find, not least as I had plenty of time waiting for the doors to be opened.

    And here we go, I boarded first at my end of the carriage and got my reserved seat at a table. A nice guy mentioned that he had a seat next to me on the table for four, but he’d sit opposite so that we had more space and we could both use the power points (which are annoyingly two for every table of four). We were both going from Leeds to King’s Cross and no-one else sat at the table during the journey, so it was comfortable. Incidentally, I’d have problems getting a suitable seat if I hadn’t of caught that earlier train, so I was pleased I had boarded an earlier service.

    The seating reservations had gone wrong though and was effectively just suspended, which seems to happen on nearly every service that I’m on. Other customers, especially those boarding later on, were getting quite distressed at the whole situation with groups broken up and no on-board train staff were seemingly available to help. If LNER can’t cope with seat reservations they’d just be better off scrapping them, but I think even their managers would agree that this sort of thing is low down their list of priorities.

    There were a couple in the four seats opposite us who pretended that the other two seats at their table were taken, which I thought was pretty unimpressive and another case in point of how the current set-up just adds stress to customers rather than making it a smooth experience.

    The ‘let’s eat at your seat’ service which I was surprised to see was working. That is until it broke at Peterborough and an announcement was made that the service was now being withdrawn for the rest of the journey.

    We arrived into London King’s Cross on time, but there were no ticket checks on the train and the gates were left open.

    A slightly blurry photo, but I didn’t want to spend too long outside King’s Cross at night with my phone trying to take photos…. I was entirely happy with the journey for my purposes, with the trains on time and as I boarded early I got my seat reservation at a table and with access to power. Other customers had a less exciting experience split up from their friends and family despite having seat reservations and this whole set-up has to be improved by the rail network if they want to increase usage. Perhaps it needs to be as radical as if the rail company can’t provide the seat booked by the customer then it has to refund the entire ticket in a similar manner to delay repay.