Pubs and music in Whitby

The Lunchtime Legends in the Elsinore
(photo: Sam Thomas)

I've just had a great time at Whitby Folk Week. The weather was wonderful, there were loads of music sessions taking place in pubs, there was dancing in the streets by various traditional dance sides and of course there was the organised festival itself.

I have written in previous years about the pub scene in Whitby. Here are a few changes I noticed:

The Angel Hotel overlooking the harbour is now a Wetherspoons hotel; I stayed there many years ago when it was a pub B&B. There are two modern looking bars on the ground and first floors serving a range of real ales, Rudgates in particular. There was nothing wrong with the Rudgates, but I wasn't keen and ended up on Moorhouses Blond Witch. At £2.89 a pint, this is the dearest Wetherspoons I have been in outside of London.

The Little Angel on Flowergate how has a good range of five beers at £2.70 a pint, which is cheap for Whitby and beaten only by Sam Smiths pubs; they included Camerons Strongarm, Tetley Bitter, Bradfield Farmers Blonde and two others that changed. They also had a special offer for Folk Week in conjunction with two other pubs (the Fleece and the Wellington): buy 10 get one free. I managed two free pints.

The Golden Lion near the swing bridge has been a Tetley-only pub for as long as I can remember and I hadn't set foot in the place since 1988. It had Pedigree, Black Sheep, Copper Dragon Golden Pippin and one other golden beer that I liked but can't recall the name. I enjoyed a couple of good sessions and several good pints in there.

The best pub for beer remains The Station (formerly the Tap and Spile ands originally the Cutty Sark). It has a good range of eight beers always on, but I mostly stuck with the Ossett Silver King, which saw me through a couple of music sessions there, including one that lasted for seven and a half hours run by my friend Howard and me.

At £3.50 a pint, The Endeavour is the dearest pub in town. The Harviestoun Bitter and Twisted was good, though.

The pub crawl (see previous post) was popular and well supported. I missed out one pub, the Black Horse, because it was packed and I didn't fancy fighting my way through the solid scrum to the bar - it is a very small pub - but I had a pint in each of the others.

The annual Lunchtime Legends rock & roll party in The Elsinore went well as always, with the pub packed. It was great to see a row of children at the front, the oldest nine, who all sat there throughout the whole three hours enjoying themselves, joining in the songs and the arm waving to the anthems, and in one case even buying a CD. One girl sang the whole chorus of Poison Ivy into the microphone. We are, I was reliably told, better than One Direction - high praise indeed. After a 35-song set, my voice was slightly knackered.

I've already provisionally booked accommodation for next year.