Well, you can ask for Kimberley Ales, but you won’t get them. However, our “bus crew: the next generation, and the generation after that” meal at the Cliff Inn, Crich, was enjoyable in every way. I am not sure that “those people who turned up every August bank holiday in the 1970s and drank the pub dry” are even a folk memory at the Cliff any more, but the current management made us extremely welcome and organised a meal for a dozen.
There is a song dating from those days, with the chorus, “Isn’t it grand, boys, to be drinking at Cliff”. Each verse begins “Look at [person]”, or, in my father’s case, “Regardez le Patron”. It’s a bit depressing to sing these days, as a lot of the subjects are now drinking in the bar up yonder. (To absent friends!) We did not, could not possibly, have done them justice, but it was at least something of a memorial, and I enjoyed it.
(This photo actually taken at the Tramway Museum, a little way up the hill. I didn’t end up taking any at the Cliff.)
Kathleen Jowitt 