The pub that changed me: I saw an Isle of Man that had been largely unknown to me'

"I felt eyes on me the second I stepped into the pub. It was as though we were interlopers in a sacred space everyone turned to look. Self-consciously, I walked to a door labelled BAR and pushed it open, and was met by further stares at me and my female companion. Only once we had got our pints and sat down did we notice the GENTS ONLY sign on the wall."

"It was 2011 in the Woodbourne hotel, a red-brick establishment on the Isle of Man, where I was born and raised. I was barely old enough to drink but heard this pub, affectionately known as the Woody, had some of the best beers on the island. I didn't know it was also one of the last holdouts of an Isle of Man where people still spoke with thick Manx accents mixed with Gaelic and knew each other's families going back generations."

"It was constantly packed, with older men propping up the bar while younger groups played pool. I visited regularly in the summer before I moved away for university always bringing a friend or two for support and saw an Isle of Man that had been largely unknown to me. Except for a few slang words, I had been raised without Manx Gaelic, and had grown up with teachers telling me it was a waste of time to learn because we all speak English nowadays anyway."

An experience in 2011 at the Woodbourne hotel pub on the Isle of Man revealed a living Manx culture where English and Manx Gaelic mixed in daily speech. Locals gathered around TVs and slot machines, drank Okell's Manx pale ale, and greeted one another with fastyr mie. The pub retained signs like GENTS ONLY and a relaxed ethos captured by traa dy liooar, meaning 'time enough.' The place was packed with older men at the bar and younger people playing pool, reflecting intergenerational ties, family knowledge across generations, and a distinct cultural identity separate from England.

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