Imperial Hotel, Blundell Park, Cleethorpes

now 16 flats

There are 2 reasons why people drink in the Imperial. The first is that Grimsby Town’s Blundell Park football ground is a goal kick away in the back streets. The second is that are no other pubs between Grimsby a mile to the north and Cleethorpes, a mile to the south. The pub is quite sizeable and occupies a corner plot on the main road between the tonw town centres. The interior is divided into 2 bars. The main bar is quite plain and featureless but has all the pre-requisites that you’d expect from what is mostly geared towards the football crowds. A few Grimsby Town shirts, scarves and player caricatures is all to speak of décor wise. The front end of the pub is divided into 2, one side being a pool table area and the other housing twin dart boards. The second bar was closed which I found strange given that this was a match day albeit the pub was hardly heaving, also a bit strange given the lack of alternative places to drink. Outside the main door is a narrow extension with some additional seating beneath a glazed angled roof. The selection of beers is hardly going to entice the discerning drinker, a selection of standard lagers, John Smiths, Strongbow and Guinness with 2 unused hand pumps. The only food I saw advertised were chips for £1. On the plus side the service was friendly and efficient and prices more than reasonable. My visit co-incided with an FA Trophy Semi Final and, as an away fan, I felt nothing intimidating with both sets of fans happily mixing together both inside the pub and outside in the sizeable adjacent car park. It does a job if you are just looking to kill time before/after a match but unless you lived nearby, I can’t see that the place offers any attraction and without any competition it’s not somewhere that is likely to make any effort to improve on itself.