The Travellers Rest, Higher Bebington

Aug 4 2007 by Mike Chapple, Liverpool Daily Post

AFTER the cancellation of the Mathew Street Festival – the latest shambles perpetrated by the Capital of Culture bureaucrats – the Pub Column wanted to get as far away as possible from the Pool this week to drown its sorrows.

Somewhere quiet and soothing to assuage the instinctive need to prowl the city, hunt down over-paid civic suit people and deliver a satisfying hoof up a well-padded jacksy.

Over the water, the Travellers Rest, in Higher Bebington, fulfilled the requirements.

The place had first been recommended by Daily Post reader John “off the cuff” Cuffe who is proud to call it his local.

Occasional PC companion, Lady Penelope of Pensby, is also a fan so it seemed entirely natural that the Travellers should be this week’s port of call.

It’s always an added bonus to have an attentive female eye on these excursions because they tend to notice the subtle pub plusses we males – attuned to making more obvious assessments such as slyly analysing the cleavage of buxom barmaids – tend to pass by.

Thus, as an oblivious Yours Truly hurtled towards the pub’s corner of the street entrance desperate for a first pint, the opening astute observation made by The Lady was of the myriad of hanging baskets dangling outside.

“Oooh, aren’t the colour combinations of those flowers gorgeous,” she cooed, to an unappreciative grunt from her primate companion.

The second observation – one this time Yours Truly was not, er, privy to for obvious reasons – was the state of the ladies’ toilets.

“They’re lovely!” exclaimed the well-bred woman, who knows what’s what when it comes to her Armitage Shanks (that’s bogs to you, missus).

Landlady of 12 years Annie Irving is attuned to such female sensibilities.

“A woman who walks in a nice, clean, fresh pub toilet will automatically assume that the kitchen will be in the same condition,” says Annie proudly, adding that the home-made lunchtime pub food, concocted by her daughter-in-law Gillian, is the stuff of legend.

The beers are, too.

The Travellers has no fewer than seven hand-pumped beers continually on the go, making it a real ale drinker’s paradise.

Pub Column favourite, the Greene King Abbot Ale, is one of the six cask beers always on tap along with the Cumberland, Flowers IPA, Tim Taylor’s Landlord, Bombardier and Hob Goblin.

There is also an ever- changing guest beer which this week started with Bateman’s Summer Swallow and ended with Copper Dragon.

It’s a tall order keeping such a hefty roster of ales in perfect nick, but Annie has the cellar experience to make it so.

She was landlady at the Dee View, Heswall, the Excelsior, on Dale Street, and the Cheshire Cheese, in Wallasey Village, before moving to the Travellers, which she loves.

“Once you move in, you don’t want to move out – the two previous landlords before me were here for 29 years each respectively so they must have loved it as well,” she explains.

We knew what Annie meant. There’s a womb-like cosiness to the place which has been refurbished three times in the past nine years and is in what could be considered as near to perfection in its current condition as it could possibly be.

“You’ve got to keep on top of it all because there’s a lot of competition with other good pubs around here like the Three Stags and the Acorn,” maintains the woman to whom running pubs is her life.

We could do with a bit more of such dedication and devotion to duty elsewhere around here.

Culturally speaking, if you catch my drift.