Cumbria Life Readers' Choice Awards Finalists

Blimey! We received an email a couple of weeks ago telling us that our pub, The Spinners Arms in Cummersdale, had been selected as a finalist in the Pub of the Year category in the Cumbria Life Readers’ Choice Awards 2022.

We were so chuffed to find out we had been nominated never mind selected as a finalist!!!

We’ve been in the Spinners for 15 years, setting up the brewery on site in 2013, and it’s been an interesting journey that’s for sure. If you’d told me when I left Carlisle in 1987 to go off to uni that I’d be back 20 years later with my own pub - never mind our own brewery - I’d have laughed at you. It was never a plan to go down this route. I’m fairly certain that when we bought the Spinners, there were a number of people that gave us 6 months! But we’ve got through recessions, floods, illness and bereavements and we’re still here – not sure if that’s tenacity or foolhardiness to be honest.

Pub life is an interesting one, it’s certainly more than a job. At the moment it’s a difficult one: pubs are struggling with rising costs, staffing issues, changes in taste and the huge competition for customers’ money and time. When we decided to take on a pub, we always said that we wanted the kind of place we enjoyed going to. We didn’t want a gastropub, a city centre venue. We wanted a welcoming, friendly village local with real fires and real ale, one that lets dogs in and kids up to a certain time. We wanted a place that you didn’t feel you were only welcome if you were eating. We were happy to have darts teams, pool teams, quiz teams.... We wanted a pub where you could have a laugh but not be surrounded by idiots, a community pub where locals would be happy to involve someone just visiting for the night or where, if you were new to the village, you could meet your neighbours. And I do believe we found it with the Spinners.

So many pubs like ours are struggling or closing and being turned into housing. But setting up the brewery has definitely given our pub a new lease of life. And even if our regulars don’t drink real ale, they still support us and the brewery as they can see people coming in specifically to try it. They know that their pub is still a pub, that we don’t need to change it into a restaurant to make it viable.

Lockdown in a pub was a very strange place to be. We live upstairs and spending 2 years wandering through an empty pub was something I wouldn’t like to do again. But we kept in touch with people, did online quizzes and foolishness posts on Facebook, we kept the music going with virtual sessions. We were thrilled to have so much support on re-opening. That first time when we could only open outside, we ended up with most of our inside furniture outside! Since then, that support has continued to be amazing – people seem to be finding us anew and I feel that the ethos we tried to build is now resonating with a lot of our customers. We’re very grateful that people seem to like the atmosphere in the Spinners and appreciate their reviews.

To know that someone thinks enough of us to put us forward for an award and that judges have then chosen us from who knows how many nominations is simply fantastic. We certainly wouldn’t be in this position if it wasn’t for good staff, good suppliers and good customers! Not sure I’ll say “here’s to the next 15 years,” but I’ll certainly raise a glass and wish everyone - including us - a very happy future!

Alison

P.S. And if you’re feeling very kind, could I ask you to please vote for us.