Ruthin

Pubs: Full
Amenities:
Places for drinking
Places for fighting
Not much else.

In the vale of Clwyd [pronounced 'clue id'] there are many rural hell holes of market towns, no longer prosperous but still stinking of cow shit and full of bigoted red necks.

Nothing to do except cry in your pint – if you can afford it – otherwise nurse a half until closing time / beating up time. Drinking and fighting and not much else.

As a lad in the 70s we had to scrounge a lift over 20 miles to Liverpool to get drugs to blot out the rain and suffering. You grew up hating the villagers down the lane, let alone the town in the next valley. As for the English, they were scum, the enemy, reaping the fruits of Imperialism, while we lived on the dole in a damp cottage and had to walk into town as we couln’t afford bikes and the bus only ran twice a week.

House Music / Raving didn’t hit North Wales till 1993, five years late, when the real E had disappeared and every one in London had moved on through hip-hop to jungle. In 1988 my mates were still listening to Dire Straits. And Ruthin was one of the more cosmopolitan towns. God help those who lived in the less affluent sheep rearing hill towns or dead coastal resorts and industrial dead ends or mining towns.

No work, no sunshine, no culture. They said Ruthin was the Arsehole of the World, but, Mold and Denbigh were several miles up it!

To survive you had to move to London as soon as you left home – although I know lads in their forties who still live with their mum so their dole cheque can all go on soap and booze.

MWnotBMW

SURROUNDING AREA ATTACKED!

This isn’t so much about Ruthin, as the general crapness of the Ruthin area. I went to school in Llangollen, a few miles away on the other side of the Horseshoe Pass. Seven lads who were in my brother’s year at school died in drink driving accidents and an eighth was blinded in one. Says it all really. As my brother said, “after a while you stop feeling sorry and think ‘get a fucking taxi!”

Gareth John