Inside the UK city home to Ryan Reynolds’ football club that makes a great weekend break
“BRING on the Deadpool, and Rob McElhenney,” goes the refrain sung by footie-mad comedy band The Declan Swans.
And it is hard to go more than an hour without hearing it in the pubs of Wrexham.
This is a city whose football club, in one of the unlikeliest sporting stories of modern times, has gone from perennial struggler to hosting fans from Brazil and the US.
The reason, of course, is the Welsh club’s takeover by Hollywood star Ryan Reynolds — husband of fellow movie A-lister Blake Lively — and his Tinseltown pal Rob McElhenney, of US sitcom It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia.
And now the club’s promotion to the Football League.
As a fan for 32 years, my claims to friends that Wrexham is worth a visit for reasons that extend beyond the stadium have always fallen on the deafest of ears. No longer.
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Just a 40-minute walk from the ground lies a home that even Ryan and Rob might find a bit excessive — one of the National Trust’s most fascinating country houses.
Erddig sits in a 1,900-acre estate of rolling meadows, thick woodland and grazing cows and is a time capsule of how a country house in the Downtown Abbey style looked.
Its preservation is due to the hoarder mentality of the latter generations of the eccentric Yorke family, owners from 1733 until the 1973.
In the later years, they simply left Erddig and its grounds to decay and re-wild, confining themselves to just a couple of rooms that were without electricity.
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The National Trust brought it back to its former glory, complete with an original bed from 1720 and Chinese silk hangings in the master bedroom.
There is also gilt furniture as well as a musical saw and poems written by the family in honour of their servants and gardeners.
“Securing now an easier berth/which she described as heaven on earth,” is one line written on the retirement of a kitchen worker. Shakespeare it is not.
Back in the city centre, the basic boozers of my youth have been mostly swept away by an impressive range of options.
The Welsh microbrew-fixated Drunk Monk is hidden at the end of an oddly narrow Victorian shopping arcade, while The Bank offers beetroot falafels.
But it is to The Turf that all Ryan and Rob fans should head.
Located at the back of the Mold Road Stand since around the 1840s, it is the oldest public house at any sport stadium in the world.
The walls are lined with murals, pictures of famous wins and a huge Wrexham FC insignia next to autographs from the club’s new owners.
Sitting in the beer garden gave me a view across the stands that, for the first time in 15 years, will be hosting league football next season.
Before then, there’s a pre-season friendly in San Diego against Manchester United this July.
“I remember when we used to play in the Isle of Man for our pre-season tour,” says one regular to me.
“Wrexham was a punchline for some people. But I don’t think they’re laughing any more.”
It’s not too surprising to learn that Reynolds has recently bought his own house just outside Wrexham.
There is a lack of real quality hotels in the city, though the Wynnstay Arms offers decent lodgings.
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It was from here that Prime Minister David Lloyd George announced the 1918 Armistice.
The city may still need to work on its poetry, but as a weekend getaway, it is increasingly well-versed.
GO: WREXHAM
STAYING THERE: Doubles at the Ramada Plaza from £105 B&B. See .
The Wynnstay Arms has double rooms from £115 in May. For more information, see
OUT & ABOUT: Tickets to visit Erdigg from £9:50, book at
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