Features: Outside seating, dog friendly, excellent for breakfast.
Price: ££
Address: Tithebarn Hill, Glasson Dock, Lancaster LA2 0BY
The Quayside at Glasson Dock is a charming little café on the side of the marina and lock at Glasson Dock. The café stands next to a little village shop and the famous Port of Lancaster Smokehouse Shop and has indoor and outdoor spaces to sit and eat. It is very popular on the weekend, especially with motorbike riders, cyclists, and other out-and-abouters. Once you get a load of the food you will understand why. Not only are the portion sizes for the breakfasts extremely generous, the food is also delicious. It’s all cooked from scratch (so at busier times it might take a little bit longer to get to you), but it’s well worth the wait.
My favourite is a Potato Cake Stack which is a potato pancake, black pudding (your choice whether you have this deep-fried or not, just to make it extra unhealthy!), poached egg, extra bacon if you want it, and another potato pancake on the bottom. This then comes with a little bit of sweet chilli jam, and hollandaise sauce (I choose to have it without the hollandaise as I’ve never really been a fan). It is delicious. I’ve had it so often in there that now when I sit down the lady knows exactly what I want and how I like (right down to the crispy bacon (can’t be doing with flubby bacon – yuck!)). Mum sometimes has a Small Breakfast when we come down here, but often just has a very tasty (and very generous) bacon roll.
I especially like going along in the summer months when I can sit at one of the tables outside and enjoy the sunshine whilst looking out over the marina. The café is dog friendly, both inside and out, so your pooches can come along for some breakfast or lunch with you. The café also does Fish & Chips on a Friday night which I am going to try sometime soon!
After you’ve finished breakfast, you can go for a wander down the quayside and have a look in the smokehouse shop, which as the name suggests has products from the actual smoke house found just down the road; everything from smoked haddock, to chicken, to cheese. There are also lots of other delicious things to be found in there like the famous Morecambe Bay Potted Shrimp in brown butter. I’m particularly partial to their conserves and jams, as well as their sweets and snack selection.
Had a delightful lunch at the Inn at Whitewell for my mum’s 70th birthday earlier this month. The Inn is a sixteenth century coaching inn that sits in the middle of the gorgeous Trough of Bowland next to the River Hodder. As a family, we’d been to the Inn before and had a wonderful meal, so it was a no brainer to go back again for mum’s special birthday.
The kitchen garden at the Inn
The Inn itself isn’t the easiest place to get to, and unfortunately driving is the only option as it is rather remote, on a country road halfway between Lancaster and Clitheroe. It takes about half an hour from Lancaster, and the road is very twisty and turny, but through some beautiful North Lancashire countryside. Just be aware that in many parts the road is narrow (so passing places are used) and also open to the fields where there may be sheep and lambs on or very close to the road.
Anyway, back to the Inn. I rang up before the day to ask for a bottle of Prosecco on the table when we arrived, and they were very happy to accommodate. In the eventuality we were early so it came just after we sat down – that wasn’t the inn’s fault that it wasn’t there, as I mentioned we were fifteen minutes early! I’d also asked whether they were able to do something with candles. As it transpired, they were able to put a candle in our shared pudding, so she could blow out a birthday candle and make a wish.
The Inn itself has a reputation for excellence in food and service, with head chef Jamie Cadman now in his twentieth year of being there, producing excellent cuisine and highlighting produce from the local area. The Inn is particularly well known for its fish pie, of which they were able to do a smaller portion for mum for her main. This was great because she can often become over faced by large portions of food and be put off, so it was great that they were able to accommodate a slightly smaller appetite and do a half-portion. She’d had queen scallops to start with. It must have been serendipity that scallops were on the special’s menu on her birthday, as they are her absolute favourite. Must have known we were coming! I didn’t have a starter, instead choosing to have the roast beef (with deliciously cut sirloin) and two Yorkshire puddings (my favourite!) and then having room to share a sticky toffee pudding with mum. Anyway, it was absolutely delicious and when I rose from the table, I was pleasantly full, rather than overly stuffed, which is sometimes a side effect of eating in these nice places.
The inn also has rooms, and other activities available for those who would like to stay. It is also very popular with walkers, as it is surrounded by beautiful rolling countryside, to go off for a nice amble or a more strenuous hike, before heading to the pub for lunch (Be aware that the pub serves lunch between 12pm – 2pm, so your party will need to order before 2pm). What a lovely way to spend a weekend morning and lunchtime!
No one was more surprised than me to see one of my favourite artists was going to playing in my hometown. Apparently, I’ve been living under rock, as he has played in Lancaster before, the last time in 2018, when I was most definitely here (so why didn’t know about it?). Anyway, I didn’t then, but thankfully, this time, I did.
The tickets sold out very quickly, with all profits from that, the merchandise, raffle, and bar were all going towards Citizen’s Advice Bureau North-West (from herein CAB NW). The charity helps thousands of people every year, with issues on everything from housing, to employment, to benefits. Last year, they helped put £13M into the pockets of people who needed it from the local area. They are an essential resource (that I have used in the past for advice on employment matters) from people looking for help and advice, and any money raised for such an institution is excellent. You can find out more information about the CAB here.
By the time you’re reading this, it will be quite a while after the gig, but I had such a good time, I wanted to write about it anyway.
I was blown away by Lancaster Town Hall as a venue itself – I don’t know for sure, but I imagine it could probably get around 2,000 people in there standing on the floor level, with a lovely wraparound balcony for limited seating above. The room had a full bar, and everything I would expect from a “proper” gig, including a solid barrier screwed into the floor, a lighting set up (with another barrier around it), a 5ft high stage, and good access. It reminded me of other medium sized venues I’d been in, such as the O2 Academy in Leeds, or Shepherd’s Bush Empire in North London, and I immediately wondered why a) I hadn’t heard of this venue in Lancaster before, and b) why wasn’t it being used as a proper touring stop for bands going round the country? Upon looking at their website, the answer to the latter might be because it only seems to get used as a venue on Saturday night, as I imagine actual city council business needs to get done during the week, so perhaps that severely limits what they can put on. As an aside, Lancaster used to be a stopping point for some seriously big bands – and this is a whole ‘nother story – but at one time the uni played host to bands such as The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, The Kinks and others. It would be beyond cool if we could get Lancaster back on the map as a “place to go” to play on a tour, not just as a random town halfway between the stops of Manchester and Glasgow.
Getting inside was quick and efficient, and the first support act Amy Rae (Spotify profile) came on at about 7.30pm. She had a lovely clear and soulful voice, singing folk/singer-songwriter type music, with easy melodies and repeatable choruses that the crowd could begin to learn quickly and get into. One particular song, ‘Gin & I’, with the refrain “I think I’ll have another gin, and make it a double…” has been going around my head as an ear worm since the gig. The second support, Joe McCorriston (Spotify profile), had a bit more of a rock and roll sound with moodier lyrics to go alongside, but he got the crowd singing along on a particularly repeatable chorus (I think he said there was exactly one word we had to learn in order to sing the chorus: do (as in do doo do do dooo do do)).
Amy Rae
Then at around 9pm, it was time for the main event. I was surprised to find that people had actually travelled a long way to come to this gig (I don’t why I should be, I’ve done it. I guess just the idea of people coming to Lancaster for such thing seems strange to me). The guy next to me had travelled from somewhere in Bedfordshire. And they were all here to see Frank Turner (Spotify profile).
Frank Turner on stage at Lancaster Town Hall
Frank was introduced by his sister, the CEO of CAB NW, as “my little brother who’s going to play some songs for you all.” Frank entered, wearing a Counting Crows t-shirt (that would become prescient later on), picking up his guitar and began with ‘If I Every Stray’ from the album England Keep My Bones (my favourite FT album). At some point, earlier in the evening, a small human of no more than 7 years of age had appeared next to me on the barrier, straining on his tippy-toes to try and see. I wanted to pick him up and sit him on the top of the rail, but I was pretty sure security wouldn’t let me do that, so instead as we reached the chorus of ‘If I Ever Stray’ which goes “So come on everybody, sing a 1, 2, 3, 4!’ I leaned down and counted out the beat to the small one, to try and get him involved. He seemed hyped by it all anyway.
For the most part he stuck to older well known singalongs such as ‘Long Live the Queen’ (heartbreakingly about a friend who died of cancer), ‘Wessex Boy,’ ‘Love, Ire & Song,’ and ‘I Still Believe.’ I love the last one especially because it just rings so true with the bridge:
‘And I still believe in the sound
That has the power to raise a temple and tear it down
And I still believe in the need
For guitars and drums and desperate poetry
And I still believe that everyone
Can find a song for every time they’ve lost and every time they’ve won…’
Any music lover will totally identify with those words; that music really does have the power to “save us all.”
Other highlights of the evening included a denouncement of fascism (‘if anyone tries to give you simple answers to deep questions, they’re lying,’) and a duet with his sister of Counting Crows’ ‘Sullivan Street.’
All in all it was an excellent night. I danced, jumped around, sung my heart out, and I can’t wait for him to come back so I can do it all over again.
