When I first met Tom I was 24 years old, and I’d fantasized of leaving marketing and opening my own version of the Café de Deux Moulins for a couple of years already. Being flat broke and on a PR career trajectory, I’d decided by then that I’d never do it. So I packed away the idea, promising myself that, maybe one day, I’d be one of those smart, suit-wearing ladies who burns out at 45, spends 10 years in a commune, lets their hair grow long and gray, and opens a tea shop with an incense-and-crystals vibe as an early retirement project.
Tom didn’t know any of this when he met me, obviously.
The dream lay dormant for a while. We moved in together; I changed jobs from music PR to digital marketing; Tom homebrewed, I blogged; we got married on a farm in the Lake District at Beltane in 2019. Throughout, Tom became less happy at his job. An aerospace engineer for Rolls Royce, he’d experienced instability there for some time, and in the back of his mind he’d been thinking about what would make him happier.
Tom had floated the idea of starting a brewery a couple of times, based on his homebrewing efforts. But talking to industry pros—like Steve Dunkley from Beer Nouveau in Manchester and Adrian Chapman at Wishbone Brewery in Keighley, Yorkshire—showed us that it wasn’t a sustainable plan for us.
Instead, we’d both enjoyed specialist retail work in the past. The idea of helping people find exactly what they’re looking for is something we kept coming back to. We joked about it after Halloween parties and on the train after trips to Manchester or Hebden Bridge—let’s start our own place. Except I was never really joking. In 2017, we collected our fragmented business plans into one master life plan. Then, satisfied we’d come up with an idea for our future lives, things continued on as normal for a while; I wrote, he worked.
Last year, Tom’s steady engineering job came to an abrupt end when Rolls Royce attempted to offshore its work; strikes and union action are still ongoing. In the meantime, he took voluntary unemployment, and at 30 years old, was forced to re-evaluate what he might want to do with his life.
A routine carved into your life is hard to culvert. When he came home and never had to go back, we sat quietly in the garden for so many identical days as the late spring sun tanned our skin, and wondered how our lives would look after all this. There was a deadly virus in the streets of cities not far from us by this point. Instead of planning our future, where we both knew a bar would be, we waited.
Nine years ago, after meeting Tom, I stopped moving my sad, slowly depleting collection of personal items around the country and made Clitheroe—in East Lancashire, northwestern England—my home.
Clitheroe is a pretty market town somewhere near the center of the Ribble Valley. We have, as national newspapers point out fairly regularly, plenty of award-winning gastropubs nearby, and our coffee shops, bakeries and market are, in my opinion, world-class. On top of the library is a clock tower that I can hear chiming from my bedroom window, and below it are 400-year-old dungeons—part of the building was once a Moot Hall, mainly dealing with the punishment of debtors. Looking over the Victorian park is a castle—more of a tumbledown keep, really—damaged by trebuchet after a short occupation by a Lancashire militia in 1649. From its ramparts is a perfect view of Pendle rising bleak and beautiful from the valley, a hill famously bridging the twilight space between folklore and history, where wise women were persecuted as witches, and where paganism and lawlessness persisted well into the 16th century. Turn to the east, and on a clear day, you’ll see the highest peaks of the Yorkshire Dales in the distance. At the time of writing this, they are bright with snow.
This is the land of the pint of Bitter.
“It takes years for even the most pervasive beer trends to reach our town. At first, it was difficult to see how a global pandemic could affect Clitheroe. That sounded like a Big Town problem.”
Working in the drinks industry here means using a bit of imagination. People of all ages drink cask-conditioned Ale, poured through a sparkler to create a perfect, foamy head. Over the past five years or so, the craft beer exception to this rule has gradually become more commonplace, and whenever the two meet, they sit comfortably side-by-side at the bar.
When I started my beer blog around four years ago, there was only one small micropub called The Ale House selling craft beer in Clitheroe. Now things have changed, but West Coast IPAs and Milkshake Sours have still not overtaken Real Ale. They never will. That’s a good thing, I think.
It takes years for even the most pervasive beer trends to reach our town. At first, it was difficult to see how a global pandemic could affect Clitheroe. That sounded like a Big Town problem. Nevertheless, I spent the whole of March 2020 in an electrical storm of anxiety and stress, missing Weinsalon Natürel in Cologne and the SIBA BeerX 2020 event in Liverpool, refusing eventually to leave the house. And then the first lockdown came. Like so many people at that time, I felt unable to do anything at all. I read books about knights and ancient forests. I lay on the garden bench in unseasonable heat, staring up at the contrail-free sky, listening to the clock tower. And I absolutely refused to think about the bar we’d been trying to open for the last several months.
In 2018, Tom and I visited León and the Órbigo Valley, in northwest Spain, invited by friends from The Spanish Yard hop co-operative who we’d met online. Oscar Grande and Oscar Muñoz (or “Oscars One and Two” as they always introduce themselves) worked in the marketing department of the hop co-op at the time, promoting a new generation of eco-minded, independent hop growers in an area where hops have been a traditional cash crop and exported out of Spain since World War I.
It was in the historical city of León that we discovered the local rules of tapas, and the “corto.” A corto is a tiny beer, around half of a caña, or 150ml, and in most bars around León they cost around €1.20. With each corto, you’re handed a snack that is unbelievably generous. Some tavernas serve local ham and cheeses—a particular favorite of Oscar Two’s was a blue cheese called Cabrales, made in Asturias. Some prefer morcilla Leonesa: a local, soft black pudding. One of the places I liked most had bowls of hot homemade potato crisps served with paprika and salt and a red pepper Rioja sauce.
After months of trying to name the hypothetical bar at the top of our business plan, we decided on Corto. We loved the spirit of sharing and snacking we found in León. No matter what, we wanted to bring a bit of that to Clitheroe: the eagerness to try something new, the excitement of a simple thing done well, the happiness of spending stretched-out afternoon-to-evening hours with people you love.
Does every bar that serves snacks have to be a tapas bar? Not at all. But there’s a certain understanding around the concept in the U.K.—Spain is a common holiday destination, and the culture and customs there are tied tightly to happy memories of enjoyment and relaxation for British people. While we didn’t want Corto to focus exclusively on wines and produce from the Iberian peninsula, we found it was difficult to talk about “delicious snacky things” served with beer, wine and cider, and “chilled, fun-loving vibes” without using words like “pintxos” or “tapas.”
“The way we imagined it, Corto would inhabit an in-between space between the egalitarian, generous tapas bar; the cozy and familiar traditional British pub; and the creative and unconventional (but too often closed-off) world of modern fine dining.”
At our place, we decided drinks would be the stars and food the supporting act, and that this would differentiate Corto from any classic, old-town tapas bar. Natural cider would be given the same respect as grower Champagne and hyped mixed-fermentation beer. We were just as inspired by top restaurants like The Moorcock Inn at Norland Moor, Halifax or Where The Light Gets In in Stockport, Manchester: Both feature beer, cider, and natural wine on their lists because they love them, and because they deserve to be there. The way we imagined it, Corto would inhabit an in-between space between the egalitarian, generous tapas bar; the cozy and familiar traditional British pub; and the creative and unconventional (but too often closed-off) world of modern fine dining.
It feels like an important note, here, that the bar was still imaginary while we made these plans. We passed the unit on our daily walks, the lease not yet finalized, looking in at the empty space. I pushed on the locked door once, to explore what it’d be like to walk in freely. The painted wood was warm.
As the year dragged on, our hopeful opening date of September 2020 became more laughable. Pubs opened again with social distancing in place in August, but we were no closer to moving in, thanks to delays caused by the pandemic. We decided to start doing whatever we could to build our brand, for as long as the physical bar was out of our hands.
On my friend’s birthday during a break in lockdowns, I sat with a pint of Moorhouse’s White Witch in the beer garden of The Calf’s Head in Worston, at the foot of Pendle hill, and in walking gear and waterproofs I launched our website and social media accounts on my slow, janky phone. We couldn’t hug, so instead we clinked our glasses together, still somehow illicit, after months of separation. Corto’s Instagram account became an unexpected hit. We started to call ourselves “everyone’s favourite hypothetical bar,” sharing posts from local businesses and photos of our area—doing whatever we could to pull others up, and share any platform we may have gained, while building our community.
I fell ill with COVID-19 on Oct. 19, 2020. Like many people who develop the “mild” version of the virus, I didn’t visit the hospital, but I wasn’t far off. I can think of three separate occasions when Tom was gathering my stuff to put me in the car. My lungs felt like glue, like they’d been filled with bleach, like they were burning through my chest cavity and melting into the rest of my body. My rib cage seemed loose, as though my bones were less dense, and lying on my side was like crushing each spindle into the soft tissue underneath. My heart beat irregularly, secured in place by slack bungee cords, a paper bag hyperventilating in my chest. I was exhausted and delirious, and cold all the time. I went to bed each night begging for some slight sign of improvement, and woke up in the early hours wheezing into my pillow. One night I dreamed I was drinking a sweet brown beer in Berlin with Anthony Bourdain. The most miraculous thing about this dream, I apparently told Tom, was that I was breathing freely. I can’t remember this. I tweeted about it, but I can’t remember typing that either.
These weeks were grueling. I had let myself think that we’d be able to create something special in our community no matter what; the dark voice of depression told me I was wrong—it was all just ego, recklessness, naivety, stupidity. I carried on posting on our Instagram while I was sick, honest about why we were absent, sure that soon I’d have to sign off and delete the account.
Instead, people started responding to us as though we were already a part of their lives, wishing us luck. Corto was something Tom and I would talk about to help us believe that there were better days somewhere out there in the far-off distance. We didn’t realize the idea of the bar would become talismanic for other people, too. In direct messages, people told me how much they were looking forward to visiting when we could finally open. They asked me what music would be playing. Inquired about reservations, pretending that we’d be open within a month or so. Those people were allowing me to live in that fantasy, giving me permission to believe it could still happen.
When I felt well enough to read through them, those messages metabolized into pure motivation. I wanted to bring Corto to life with the polish and confidence these beautiful people deserved. After three housebound weeks, Tom took me on a short walk around the nearby fields. I cried with the overwhelm of being outside, overlooked by a late-autumn Pendle yellowing with bracken, my steps small on what felt like a much more vast, more unfamiliar planet. Things had changed. I’d missed the leaves falling. The last swallows had gone. I felt out of step, in between two lives, deeply depressed and worn down to my base elements, but unreal, ethereal. And even though my body wasn’t working like it used to, I knew that we had to carry on building our dream. It wasn’t a frivolous Positive Mental Attitude Instagram account I felt guilty about not updating regularly anymore. It had become a point in the distance to keep reaching for, some star that was closing in, and it was going to happen.
“Looking back I can see dates when we saw builders, and a photograph of a bottle of Champagne—bought from a local shop; we had no stock yet—marking the day we finally signed our lease. Outside of the lawyers’ offices, we high-fived, then wondered if we looked like the most amicable divorce ever.”
The next month or so was well shuffled. Kate Major, manager of The Rutland Arms and The Crown Inn in Sheffield, and a mentor to both Tom and me, told me to keep a diary so that I could reflect on this time and savor our accomplishments once I had enough distance to appreciate them. I tried, Kate, but all I could focus on was forward motion. Looking back I can see dates when we saw builders, and a photograph of a bottle of Champagne—bought from a local shop; we had no stock yet—marking the day we finally signed our lease. Outside of the lawyers’ offices, we high-fived, then wondered if we looked like the most amicable divorce ever. It was the most exciting thing to happen so far in 2020. And then, after more than a year of impotent, frustrated waiting, more good things happened, one after the other after the other.
“Did you know you can get down under the flooring?” our always-happy landlady beamed, on a final visit to sort the fire alarms. No. We did not know that. We’d agreed not to mention the storage issues for our sanity’s sake, clueless about how we were going to overcome the challenge of managing inventory in such a small space. Tom had only just stopped having nightmares about having to fill the entire ground floor with bathrooms.
“The hatch is under the stairs, in the cupboard.”
When she’d gone, we pulled back a plywood plank covering the hole, and shone our phone flashlights into the void. A poured concrete floor. We lowered a set of ladders in and Tom disappeared for a while. When he came back he was laughing.
“It’s massive,” he said, climbing out of the hatch, covered in cobwebs. “A proper cellar! We kept the faith.”
Lockdown regulations in the U.K. meant that in December 2020, “essential” businesses could continue trading. In true British style, that included off-licenses—convenience stores where booze is sold. It was our builders who mentioned the idea of opening as a shop first. It took a week to put up a temporary wall and pull the racking shelving up from the cellar. On Dec. 19, 2020, Corto opened as a craft beer, natural wine, and real cider shop. On our first day we had almost 200 customers, and every single one of them had something supportive and wonderful to say to us, even despite the lines that stretched outside in the street. I remember standing in the building-site space behind the neat new temporary wall, sectioned off from the happy, chattering people on the other side of the cash register, and crying. I hadn’t let myself believe it could have gone so well. To go from months of darkness and isolation into a glowing space of positivity and joy was more than I could have ever hoped for.
Since then, circumstances have changed again, and we’re operating as a webshop and local delivery service. Corto’s door remains locked to customers in a physical sense, but we’ve tried to maintain a sense of community and closeness in our online worlds. As any publican will tell you, however, it just isn’t the same.
Lockdown exists to keep us safe, but the knock-on effect for Corto, and for thousands of businesses like ours, is to take away every personal aspect, leaving only the sales. The software we use to manage our webshop shows me where people can be further squeezed and cajoled, and reprimands me for not taking better advantage of browsers. It’s taken weeks for me to feel able to say: No, fuck you. I don’t want to exploit every penny out of our visitors. We’re not an e-commerce business, and we’ve barely stopped resenting being forced to temporarily become one.
We never kidded ourselves that we’d be rich from this. This is a culmination of our very separate life goals, fitted together like a tsugite joint—not perfectly and by chance, but through work and dedication; careful, methodical practice; and a bit of talent. Those short weeks of retail on either side of Christmas showed us that despite all the setbacks, we were right to keep the faith. In so many small but significant ways we were seeing what we’d sown begin to push through the wintry earth.
For a while we had no real answers for those who asked us why we were doing this, and why now. Until we’re open and welcoming guests to spend time with us, we’re not expecting to be fully understood. But as things have progressed, the reasons have solidified themselves. Working with people is what we’re good at. The world of beer, wine, and cider is where we’re meant to be. Life is short and must be enjoyed. Clitheroe is our home. That’s really all there is to it.
Words by Katie MatherIllustrations by Ryan Troy Ford
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