retiredmartin

On our way to a brewery break in Cropton we stopped at Malton for a last bit of Wi-Fi quiche before entering the Moors.   The big news in Malton is Brass Castle’s cutting edge bar, but we fancied coffee and battenburg cake in the Spotted Cow in Malton.

It’s a Tetley Heritage Inn, which is still generally a pretty good sign of a good pub, even if the Tetley is a shadow of the beer it used to be.  Actually it just OK here (NBSS 3), though Tetley really isn’t a beer you drink in halves; it needs a good head. I liked the fact the other beers were from Courage and Marston, rather than those new fangled Black Sheeps and Copper Dragons.

The pub and other customers were wonderful.  I may introduce a scoring system for customers, in which case this would score NOCSS 4.  The regulars here looked like the cast of Heartbeat; you could almost have been in Yorkshire.

The pub address is Cattle Market, because it backs onto the cattle market, and a lot of folk were coming in for their mid-morning cake and cobs.

You just don’t find bar counters like that in Brew Dog.

There were touches of Leighton Buzzard’s Red Lion, which I’m delighted I shall be revisiting now Buzzard’s micropub is in the Guide.

The lived-in feel extended to several rooms, including a classic tap, lounge and pool room, all with Pub Curmudgeon-approved pub furniture. I believe the sauce bottles were for bacon sandwiches rather than being ironic and arty.

The Tap felt a bit like an inner sanctum, so we used the lounge, which had some great daytime TV on. While I nosed around, Mrs RM hid the cake from me.  It wasn’t a good start to our minibreak.