Saturday 28th May
We have had our rest day at Walsden and a good job too as the weather has been a bit grim again. It rained most of the morning and has been quite windy so we stayed in, apart from a trip to the shop and a visit to B and B’s for a cup of tea, where it was revealed that Barbara had infact succumbed to the charms of the huge vanilla slices at Grandma Pollard’s yesterday!
Late morning there was a window of opportunity to get Fat Dog out for a toddle. He did really well and we only took half an hour to get to the Mason’s Arms at Gauxholme, which is about half a mile from here!
The Mason’s Arms is a real old locals pub and very dog friendly as George will tell you in his review. We were the only ones in there until just before we left when another couple and their dog arrived. From our point of view it is a very interesting pub with really good beer. The landlord and landlady are a very nice couple and we learned quite a bit about both the pub and the local area.
For example the room we were sitting in used to be a mortuary and the tables were the original mortuary slabs! Unfortunately we sat at the smallest one which was used for the children! Nice bit of wood though. Over the fireplace is a carved motiff (see photo) with masonary tools depicted on it and the letters GBM which they think may stand for Great Britain Masons. The pub is situated almost under the arches of the railway viaduct, in fact when they built the viaduct the original building had to be moved. There is a bar upstairs which was used by the workers on the railway so they could come in from the viaduct, have a drink and go back out again without coming down to ground level! After this there was a boxing ring upstairs until the 60’s. Fascinating.
On the way back from the pub we encountered B and B taking the dogs for a walk, they don’t always go to the pub with us pair of old soaks! Unlike us they are able to resist the draw of the beer!
Tomorrow we are off to Todmorden, weather permitting.
