Ale trail

[whole diary]

[Kernow Otter]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-22689020

Inevitable I suppose.

[grahame]

Thanks for posting that - a lot of interesting comment for those of us who want to encourage more people who wouldn't usually use the train to do so, and fresh in my mind after Monday - for a handful, that was a trip to a great watering hole!

Pub landlords on a popular railway ale trail have introduced restrictions on alcohol sales after they claimed the route had been "hijacked" by parties.

The Transpennine Real Ale Trail includes pubs on or near stations between Batley, West Yorkshire, and Stalybridge, Greater Manchester.

On Saturdays, some pub landlords will not sell lager and shots in an effort to try and reduce binge drinking.

"It can be quite ridiculous, with lots of anti-social behaviour," he said.  "We get people urinating ...

I feel for the people who need to urinate, frankly ... sell 'em beer and don't provide facilities for the consequences. 

"We are just a village pub and we just can't cope with the numbers that are coming in," he said.

I have a degree of sympathy; it's difficult to predict numbers fo unbooked services.  Train Operating Companies are use to (and allow for) passenger flows, but occasionally they get caught by an "unexpected passenger flow".   I wonder what next football season will bring to Saturday loadings to and from Yeovil.

"We are a real ale pub, we've got a brewery on site, we are all about the real ale.  "The guys who are coming over and doing it are not real ale enthusiasts and obviously that's what we are about and that's what we want to bring it back to."

Hmmm - if you have a product that customers want, then who are you to turn them away.  If your product wasn't right for them (and you could make it inappropriate, I suspect), then they would go away.  I get an uneasy feeling of older people being considered a nuisance on trains because they ask more questions, take longer to get on and off, and travel cheaper ... but that's at off peak times when in all common logic the trains should have less than peak loadings.

[Red Squirrel]

"It can be quite ridiculous, with lots of anti-social behaviour," he said.  "We get people urinating ...

There's a time and a place for everything. From the context, I think it's fair to assume that the place was inappropriate.

Hmmm - if you have a product that customers want, then who are you to turn them away.
 

It really isn't that simple, is it? We used to have a Wine Fair in Bristol; over a few years it became overrun by people who weren't interested in wine, but just wanted to drink far too much with no consideration for the impact they were having on everyone else. The Wine Fair is no more.

The pubs on the Ale Trail, I suspect, are keen to encourage the kind of fairly-sensible drinker who might sport the occasional sandal (with socks, naturally), perhaps with abundant facial hair and their own pewter tankard; people who can remember when a pint of beer cost 4/6. They don't want hordes of Stella-drinking twentysomethings dressed as Bernie Clifton riding a vomit-streaked emu.

I think it's pretty likely that the passengers on this route for whom catching these trains is not a five-minute wonder will be very happy when these 'parties' move on to make someone else's life a misery.

[grahame]

It really isn't that simple, is it? ...

No, it isn't.   To some extent I was showing the other side of the coin - expressing the opposite opinions which I don't necessarily agree with in total.   And yet ... I am very conscious of how easy it is to garner business and complain when you get too much of it,  you get the sort of customers you didn't really want, or you get business that your arrangements can't cope with.

[caliwag]

..."vomit streaked emu"

I was about to point out that the Ale trail isn't electrified but realised what you meant...brilliant!

[grahame]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-22927355?

Starting on Saturday, some landlords refused to sell lager, doubles or shots to customers ...

Mr Inman, who owns the West Yorkshire pub, added: "Sales were down ...

Somehow I think that might have been predictable     ... just as we predicted that the use of the TransWilts line would fall when all southbound services between 06:38 and 19:11 were withdrawn!

[eightf48544]

The pubs on the Ale Trail, I suspect, are keen to encourage the kind of fairly-sensible drinker who might sport the occasional sandal (with socks, naturally), perhaps with abundant facial hair and their own pewter tankard; people who can remember when a pint of beer cost 4/6. They don't want hordes of Stella-drinking twentysomethings dressed as Bernie Clifton riding a vomit-streaked emu.

What do you mean 4/6 a pint that was expensive! I remember going in the pub at the top of   Atherstone Locks (11)  and the mild was !/11 a pint. One of the crew fell in getting back on the boat.