The Snug Life Story-Part 2

After opening on August 1st 2012 we soon developed a great group of regulars made up of locals and tourists be they weekenders or holidaymakers here for a week or two. We then got to thinking about extra little things we could do and I always remembered local pubs in East Manchester running trips out for regulars a few times a year. It was something that seemed to die out apart from exceptional places where there would still be a trip to Blackpool or a race meeting, so that's what we decided to do.

Our first trip was in December 2012 to the Marble Arch pub in Manchester including a brewery tour. The picture left is the December 2013 trip when we took advantage of the hold of the coach to also return empty casks which the regulars kindly took down the hill to the brewery for us. Until this year the Manchester trip became our regular Christmas trip.

Other trips have included Liverpool, the wonderful Hawkshead Brewery and Unsworth's Yard in Cartmel. We have also visited Chester, Skipton and Settle, Ulverston Brewery and the Prince of Wales at Foxfield.

In Cartmel we always seem to get good weather and enjoy sitting in Unsworth's Yard drinking beer from Peter Unsworth's brewery, wine from Davd Unsworth's fantastic wine and spoirit shop and cheese from the Cartmel Cheese Shop. Happy days indeed

David Unsworth has also helped us raise money for Help for Heroes by generously hosting a gin tasting evening in The Snug where we sampled a huge range of gins from all over the world while David gave us a very interesting and humorous history of gin. When we re-open in February we hope that David will be returning to broaden our horizons with some more tasting evenings.

We have also had a wine tasting evening with the Lancashire Wine School which everybody enjoyed and found highly informative and which again raised funds for Help for Heroes. We have also held various quiz nights and cheese and port evenings to raise funds.

In November 2013 we held our first beer festival which we touched on briefly in our last post. Since then we have had three more festivals with over 35 real ales and ciders last year. The festival has been held in The Snug and the Midland and Furness Hall in the Heritage Centre The £2 admission fee goes to the Station Heritage Trust, and we have averaged a donation of around £1000 each year.

This year we had our inaugural gin festival to celebrate World Gin Day on June 10th. Jules had the unenviable task of sourcing the 25 gins which involved a great deal of sampling which the poor woman found extremely arduous as you'll appreciate. But source them she did and there were some wonderful gins, many of which we now stock on a permanent basis. We knew gin was popular but nothing prepared the three of us on the bar that day for quite how busy we would be. Marc was superb, as ever, and Vicky worked really hard in the kitchen keeping on top of washing glasses. True team work that day.

Again we are reviewing arrangements for future festivals while we are 'resting' so watch this space.

For a couple of years we also had The Snug Ukulele Group which entertained at a couple of beer festivals and met monthly when we were closed on Mondays. Again this idea is something we are looking at and several ideas have been thrown in the melting pot for next year. Yet again, watch this space.

The first Saturdays of most months at The Snug are now synonymous with Thai Street Food. Even last weekend we had an enquiry from somebody wanting to know if there would be Thai food available on Saturday.

Of course when we re-open Amporn and Eric will be back bringing their wonderful Thai food for people to enjoy. In the meantime you can find out where they are cooking next by visiting their website: Thai Kitchen In Lakeland.

Finally we have The Snug Fantasy Premier League which is now in its fourth season. This season we have 29 teams contesting and we are introducing our own league cup in the New Year which will be fought for on a knock out basis. Good luck to all involved and, if you missed out this season, watch out for details of how to enter over the summer for the start of the 2018/19 season.

On the prospect of the next football season being 2018/19 I will leave you with a question: Where does the time go?