I decided that I fancied a Northern foray to Glasgow to coincide with my 40th birthday in June 2008 and managed to gather a posse of six other friends to accompany me. The first challenge as ever was the transport as it looked initially that there was to be engineering work but thankfully that was subsequently averted.
We headed up on the Friday and stayed at the Premier Inn near Charing Cross Station off Sauchiehall Street and had a cold one in the Baby Grand Bar & Grill directly opposite the hotel where they do periodically have live acts playing on the house baby grand piano.
We then headed on to the nearby Nice N Sleazy, named after the Stranglers song and the bar also featured in the artwork for Mogwai’s Rock Action album. Refuelled by a monster bowl of noodles we travelled over to the East End of the city to a couple of rough and ready pubs including Bairds Bar by the Barrowland venue.
Baby Grand Bar and Grill. Image Credit Glasgow Live
Naturally I had ensured there would be live music developed into the schedule and located a gig that night at Glasgow Rockers. Rockers is situated on Midland Street, and is a small dingy punk club buried in a tunnel below Glasgow Central station with a capacity of probably about a hundred.
When I researched the club, I did find some initial evidence that Green Day had played there in 2009, which I thought highly improbable and surmised that this was in fact a transpositional error. My initial suspicions were confirmed when their past concert list showed them at that time being bang in the middle of a huge stadium tour of America!
The first band we saw was The Babysitters who were followed by the Eddies from Dundee. The latter formed around the brothers Dean and Dale Hoth, who had just released their second album ‘Twice Around the World’.
Glasgow Nice N Sleazy. Image Credit coolplaces.co.uk
There was a curtain in front of the small stage where you could hear the main band Guns on the Roof warming up. They hailed from Leeds and had already garnered support slots with punk luminaries such as Anti-Nowhere League, Rancid, Stiff Little Fingers and UK Subs.
Our group constituted much of the audience so Uncle George endeavoured to good humouredly liven up the atmosphere by generating a punk style mini mosh pit with the main singer. He was perhaps a tad over boisterous, but the singer was also rather precious which resulted in him uttering the random comment of ‘get off me leg’! We left soon after and topped off the night with ‘one for the ditch’ in the hotel bar.
We awoke to a gloriously sunny Saturday, and we achieved our first objective by purchasing some breakfast from a local café without the local obligatory option of additional cheese! We commuted back south to Carlisle for the next leg of our journey.
I had discovered there is a train that takes you on the scenic route from Carlisle to Lancaster which literally hugs the Cumbrian Coast, adding two hours to your overall journey but the scenery was a blast! I think the train now runs from Lancaster to Barrow via those stations.
We passed through St Bees and Whitehaven where I bizarrely once saw Henry Rollins at the Civic Hall. Our first stop off was at Ravenglass to meet Tony Dewhurst who joined the crew from there onwards. On the Main Street there is another station where you can catch a narrow gauge steam train up to Eskdale. Ravenglass was also the location a few years ago for a British Sea Power festival which a couple of pals attended. Before departing we obviously paid a visit to the Ratty Arms pub.
Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway. Image Credit steamheritage.co.uk
For a train buff, the most exciting aspect of this trip was that there were request stops where you just simply asked the train guard to pull in at the next station, which happened for us to be Foxfield. Across the road was the renowned real ale pub the Prince of Wales where we had 55 minutes in the beer garden before the next hourly train came chugging around the reservoir.
Now, there are many legendary tales about Uncle George, yellow box, 8th tee and Rochdale disco to name an initial triumvirate. Ulverston was now added to that list, but paraphrasing from what they say in the movies, what happens in Ulverston literally stays in Ulverston!
We progressed onto Lancaster where we met the Berry brothers in a canal side pub and then had a fine curry in the ever-reliable Bombay Balti and then a subsequent minibus home to complete a rather fabulous weekend.