Sometimes we just go where the Google tells us. I don’t know if you are like this, but when we get hungry and are somewhere we turn to our mobiles and find a recommended eatery. This is how we found The Wheatsheaf.
The Wheatsheaf is in Sutton Leach, St Helens. Kinda, in the middle of nowhere special, in the middle of nowhere special. Well, it’s in a built up area, but just an ordinary built up area. So we followed the nice Google Map Navigator lady’s instructions and arrived and parked on a slope that surrounded the building.
On looking for the correct entrance, I noticed the doors all had places for water guards to stop the floods coming into the building. Hang on a minute, was it going to be safe? Flood guards? Hello?
The building itself is split into huge rooms. The ‘Public Bar’ area is a typical sports pub with huge screens billowing out the annoying output of Sky Sports, and there are snooker tables. Nicely this is kept away from the food area. I hate foodie pubs where you are constantly forced to listen to sport on the telly.
What I guess would have been the Saloon Bar area is a number of rooms full of old style tables that are serviced by a troop of staff in a constant and highly efficient attempt to keep the customers satisfied with food and drink. Each of these rooms is completely full of junk, erm, I mean, memorabilia. You know, brass things, including coal shuttles, line the walls crammed together on shelves or hooks. And the spaces with no ‘stuff’ have pictures hanging there. Busy busy busy walls.
But wait, this is all very nice sounding for an olde worlde type place, but it all slopes. Yes, it slopes. There’s about a 15 degree slope from the front of the building to the back throughout.
What?
Yes, the floor has a constant slope. At times you are walking downhill and other times uphill, or lurching sideways. Lord knows what it does to a drunk person.
Hello Whatsheaf management?
The floor is sloping. The whole building is slowly disappearing down a huge sink hole, surely? Yet everybody just sits there quite happily eating and drinking. Hello? Death is imminent, people! And that’s without mentioning the water guards that must be there to stop some river from pouring in.
Maybe it is a way of helping customers appreciate the food, constantly fearful that it’s a last supper before going straight to Hell.
Actually, even without the fear, the food is brilliant. The portions are huge. Seriously. Everything is deliciously made on the premises, not made somewhere else and boiled up in a bag as most pub chains seem to do these days. Indeed, I don’t think The Wheatsheaf is part of a chain. It’s better than that.
Yes, it is really a pub serving food, but the quality and quantity of that food is truly amazing. Even if you are eating it on the deck of the Titanic as it sinks, the food is honest fayre, nicely priced.
A warning about going to the Gents, though. The slightly twisting corridor and then having to walk ‘up’ the slope to the urinals is very strange and definitely like being on board a ship in rough seas. That’s my excuse for the splashback and and I’m sticking to it.
So, if you are near, pop in and enjoy. More about them on their own website here.
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