🖨 Ryde - Nostalgia Tour

A wildcard to start. As it is a long walk from here to the Falcon it might be too much to be part of the crawl but it is important to include it as you can then imagine New Year’s Eve 1980. Mark and I are 16 and the pub is hosting a New Year party. I am a cowboy and Mark is a gangster complete with blank firing pistol. We carry out mock Freebie and the Bean assassinations in the men’s toilets, drink and dance the night away. I think of Mark most days. He didn’t make it past middle age and I will always miss him. Anyway onto another pub retracing our wobbly 1981 journey home down St John’s Hill, quick drawing and whistling the Godfather theme.

Start at the top of town. Used to be the Hospital opposite and the place full of nurses and doctors. Those days are long gone and this pub is a lone survivor in this neck of the woods.

One of the last proper wet pubs in town. I watched Gaza cry at the 1990 World Cup on the TV in here.

Half a pint of fiz for old times sake. Spent 1983 and the start of 84 playing pool and throwing darts in here.

Another fiz nostalgia fix. Was Yelf’s Tap with the cellar underneath. Probably my main pub in Ryde back in the day. I can still see my friend Mark sitting at a table slowly sipping his pint and rolling some Golden Virginia. The place is unrecognisable from those days with walls removed and a complete refurb.

Once the obligatory meeting place. From carol singing during the Christmas of 1981 to meeting old friends in the 1990s. A pint here with my brother after my Grans funeral was where we really said goodbye. The place has changed little but the Burts has gone and the beer is now pretty dreadful.

Sunday lunch with Mum, Dad and my brother Dave. The place has burnt out in a fire and been reconstructed since then but it still has hints of the old place. Never one for us youngsters at the time.

Out of the way but worth a visit. My friend Stuart used to live around the corner so we went here a fair bit in the early 90s