DRINKERS on the Real Ale Trail got a shock when they turned up in Marsden on Saturday lunchtime hoping for a quiet pint.
Greeting them off the trains were a posse of mounted police accompanied by police officers on the ground dotted around the village.
A single train stop can see more than 50 young men being disgorged on to the platform before they set off snaking through the village in search of a good time.
The police presence – which some drinkers saw as “heavy-handed,” and “over the top” – comes after landlords and brewers agreed that a crackdown was needed on bad behaviour at weekends.
The popular trail, which runs from Manchester to Leeds via the Colne Valley, Huddersfield, Mirfield and Dewsbury has been ‘hijacked’ by hen, stag and other parties.
It began four years ago as an enjoyable day out for genuine real ale enthusiasts after a TV programme popularised the route, but since then residents have become fed up with revellers’ increasingly anti-social behaviour.
There have been numerous incidents of drinkers vomiting in people’s gardens and urinating in the streets as well as more intimidating behaviour.
In one infamous incident a Marsden resident, Dorothy Lindley, was shocked to find a drinker sitting in her living room last summer.
And there have even been occasions when drunk men and women have been witnessed running on the railway tracks, endangering their own lives.
West Yorkshire Police and British Transport Police have promised a crackdown.
The Examiner revealed that a new group comprising landlords and brewers from Stalybridge to Dewsbury had been set up to combat the menace.
The Real Ale Trail Licensees scheme (RATL) say participating pubs, including The Riverhead, Marsden, will not be serving lager, shots, spirit doubles, cider and other tipples favoured by binge drinkers on Saturdays.
But Daniel Wyness, 27 from Bradford who was enjoying a drink at The Railway pub in Marsden with his friends Adam Keath and Luke Dawson, said he was shocked at seeing the mounted police when he got off the train.
He said: “It felt like I had come to a football match when we saw the mounted police unit.
“We have just come out for a pleasant day out and are having to drink our beer in plastic glasses.
“The trade this trail brings is obviously good for the local economy but if it’s getting out of hand then it’s counterproductive, it seems a bit like one of those Mediterranean islands that get invaded by the Brits.”
Maggie Holmes, a building society manager from Sherbourne-in-Elmet, near York, was out with three girlfriends.
She said: “It’s been excellent. We have had a good day out but I do wonder at the cost of this kind of policing and the resources that have been poured into this.
“We come from villages and we would be absolutely mortified if this was happening on our doorstep.”
Her friend Joanne Gascoigne, a nurse from Leeds added: “I feel sorry for the villagers” but she joked: “I am most upset that there’s no doubles being served!”
One of the mounted police officers, Adrian Simpson, said: “If we are helping to stop things getting out of hand then that’s great.
“It’s the second weekend that West Yorkshire Police have run it and it was really, really busy”.
