The Shay Wake (JD Wetherspoon), Oldham

Not a bad Spoons and certainly the most promising pub for real ale in the area. Half a dozen or so guest ales plus the usual trio. All fairly open plan but a few booths in the middle break up the rest of the pub into two sections. Toilets on the ground floor, as there is nowhere else they could go! A beer garden is signposted to the rear of the pub, though I did not investigate.

Surprisingly large 'spoons in a relatively small former mill town, and an oddly low single-storey corner building. Elongated, semi-modern interior. Seven different real ales available from the row of eight handpumps: a pair from Titanic, Aired Ale from Bridge House, Beartown Glacier and Blacks Irish Red (£2.46) in addition to Doom Bar and Abbot.

Official site of The Shay Wake (JD Wetherspoon) - www.jdwetherspoon.com

Official site of The Shay Wake (JD Wetherspoon) - www.jdwetherspoon.com

This JDW is set in a smallish single storey building. It was a shopping centre that was destroyed by fire so presumably is a new build. The problem I have with that theory is that the toilets are not set at the top of a whole load of stairs. As noted below it's an open plan roughly rectangular room with fairly typical furnishings. The bar has eight hand pumps which had the JDW Trio Of Doom, Robinson's Double Hop, Adnam's New Realm IPA & another International beer from Caledonian, Kelham Island Pale Rider and Dark Star Hophead. Although this was a better choice than I've seen in scores of larger outlets I went for the festival Kung Fu cider which I hadn't tried and was from a choice of eight. I thought this was a pretty good Spoons.

Nice place to take your aged mum, as with all spoons I've been in, beer well kept and food cheap and fills a hole. Gets busy and I was in Thursday early afternoon, the two pubs across the road must be crying into there beer at how many people were in. Weekend evenings are particularly busy and not long back a mate was turned away by the door men for having trackie pants on. Toilets spotless and one tv showing the news channel with sub titles . Atmosphere is fairly friendly ( that's why I take my aged mum in) Just wish they , like all spoons had a tesco meat counter ticketing system for getting served as the bar can go from empty to five deep in a minute. Giving it a nine as I always seem to sit at dirty tables otherwise wold be a ten

Not a big lover of Spoons if you work it out they have caused so many little pub to close but to be fair marked the 10 out of 10 it had hand pumps had a pint from Yorkshire brewery it was very good but sadly lost the piece of paper i wrote its name on. But not being two faced i could get converted to calling in Wetherspoons more just for the hand pulled beer. But will always like the old boozer's the best

In local dialect "Shay" is how Shaw is pronounced and Wakes was how the annual holiday was known until the Cotton Mills finally closed down. So "The Shay Wake" is a reference to that time, in the not so distant past, when all the Cotton Mills and businesses in Shaw would shut for a fortnight and the town would be like a ghost town - most of the workers going on holiday to places like Blackpool or Rhyl. So that holiday was "The Shay Wakes" but for some reason JD Wetherspoon have missed off the "s" from the word "wakes" - possibly because they are not fully conversant with local knowledge. It is this missing "s" which has puzzled many of the Shay folk. Despite all that it is a cracking pub with a good reputation for it's meals - The best run pub in town.