Motorway pubs could prove the saviour of a Lancashire motoring landmark

SHERLOCK Holmes might have called it a two pipe problem. For me, a clash between two of my favourite things – real cars and real ale – is a two pint problem.

Until very recently I could enjoy both, but knowing the clear boundary between them. Most of my motoring life, particularly on still, summer evenings like the ones we’ve been having lately, involved a classic car of some sort, a quiet pub in the West Lancashire countryside and a refreshing, but legal, shandy. Similarly, if I wanted to be happy in the haze of a drunken hour, Merseyrail’s finest and a plethora of town centre pubs were my oyster.

That’s why new plans by JD Wetherspoon to start opening pubs at motorway service stations didn’t leave me angry or overjoyed. The idea, like a hangover, hurts my head slightly. On the one hand you can take the view of an old mate of mine who argued vociferously that allowing any pub, anywhere, to have a car park is encouraging driving while smashed.

Motorway service stations are essentially big car parks, albeit ones with overpriced coffee shops attached. What’s more, unlike even the quietest of country pubs they cannot be reached by public transport (National Express coaches don’t count).

The Daily Mail reader in me, therefore, thinks motorway service stations are a menace that’ll fuel a drink-driving epidemic. But then I remembered all those visits to Forton Services on the M6, gazed at the Gerry Anderson-esque architecture of the old restaurant tower and wondered which idiot it was who decided Britain’s motorists would no longer benefit from it. It’s a wonderful bit of Sixties architecture – and, on account of it being a listed building, it seems the powers that be agree with me – and I always feel slightly sad when I see it lingering above the Lancashire countryside, unloved and unused.

The idea of it being a family-friendly pub/restaurant job, albeit one festooned with signs warning the designated drivers not to fill up on John Smiths as well as unleaded, appeals more than seeing it not being used at all.

Last year, I put it to JD Wetherspoon that if they’re serious about opening a pub in Ormskirk, they should name it The Harold Wilson (and if they do, you heard it here first). Now I’m going to stick my neck out and suggest that if they’re going to throw caution to the wind and start opening pubs on the motorway, they might as well bring a Lancastrian landmark familiar to drivers across the North West back to life.

Well, the idea made sense at the pub anyway.

The problem with Pub Satnav

THE problem with most breakdown recovery crews, as I've discovered whenever a car of mine conks out, is that they aren't real ale enthusiasts.

This isn't about advocating drinking and driving, which is a stupid idea, but more about confused people in RAC and AA call centres not understanding how my internal satnav works, which leads to all sorts of confusion whenever I'm trying to get someone to come and rescue me. I am, I hate to admit it, someone who navigates almost entirely by pubs.

I realised this the other day, when I had to whizz between various points in West Lancashire on a list of Champion errands. I wasn't going from Ormskirk to Birkdale at all. I was driving from the Five Ways, past the Saracen's Head, towards The Crown. Depressing, isn't it?

Yet I know loads of people, particularly the ones in the biking fraternity, who seem to navigate using just popular drinking spots, even if it's ones they never actually frequent themselves. It's something my Champion colleague Jim Sharpe touched on a couple of months ago, when he suggested entire areas, like Old Roan, become so synonymous with a pub that they actually end up borrowing their names, but I'm going further than that. I'm talking about an entire network of internal TomToms preprogrammed with the names and exact location of pubs.

Take Burscough. To get there, I turn left at the Morris Dancers, head past the Heaton's Bridge, left by the Beaufort Hotel, and then towards either The Slipway or The Ship. If, like me, you have Pub Satnav preinstalled then you'll know exactly which set of roads I mean. But give me the directions in road names and numbers and I'm lost. Literally.

It's a great system for all sorts of reasons - you're never short of somewhere to stop for lunch, for instance - right up until the point when you have to give directions to someone who isn't an expert at Pub Satnav. That's how I ended up on the phone to a breakdown call centre in the middle of nowhere last month, struggling to get them to the B6261. That's where the Shap Wells Hotel is, but they didn't understand.

Do you suffer from Pub Satnav? I'd love to know, if you send in your thoughts to the usual Champion address at 166 Lord Street in Southport.

Which is just around the corner from The Guesthouse, incidentally.