retiredmartin

I have one more wedding-skiving confession to make. During the post-legalities photos at Helston Registry Office yesterday, I nipped in the Blue Anchor. I didn’t get caught either.

This is one of the great brew-pub survivors, a wonderful building, and one of the 25 entrants in the first 25 Good Beer Guides Mrs RM and I visited in 1997-98.

Nothing has changed, and as a building this is on a par with the Square & Compasses, though with even more rooms, all fulfilling a different role.

At just gone 10am it was also very pubby, mopping up more drinkers than you might see in most town pubs at noon. Conversation centred on house heating issues, and what else is there really ?

The fire here could have solved the town’s heating problems;

The famous Spingo range only stretches to one sub-5% beer, and the Middle was the pint of choice. To be blunt, it doesn’t drink like a 5%, and I thought it average (NBSS 3). A pint of Courage on gravity would have suited me better.

As a pub experience, it was hard to beat though, even though an imminent wedding lunch denying me a chance to re-sample their wonderful pasties.

At the back of the pub are the classic outdoor toilets and an accumulation of beer barrels in anticipation of Flora Day, Helston’s big annual bash. It’s on this weekend (Sat 7th).

Boak & Bailey wrote a lovely about their trip to Flora Day last year, and I can’t say the other pubs in town looked inspiring.  The new Spoons seemed to be making an effort beerwise.

Helston has a dullish High Street, Blue Anchor apart, but some very attractive winding streets that took me up to the very lovely parish church with it’s sea of wild garlic.  That was no help to me at all as I searched in vain for a tie for the wedding though.