IT PAINS ME TO SAY THIS, BUT…

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About time to bring the Worcester Wobble to an end, or it’ll take longer than the radio serialisation of “Tale of Two Cities” on LBC.

We’d missed the “official” pint in the Paul Pry, but despite the call of the curry I felt we should visit Worcester’s most famous open/shut pub.

I’ve had the picture below as my screensaver for a while, without knowing what it was.  Telling Worcester pubs apart is an artform.

Proper Pub

That Hobsons on election day in 2015, with sun streaming through large windows, stuck in the mind. And clearly the bench seating and simply furnished rooms are pub heaven.

It closed a year later (not my fault) before reopening again last year.  And straight into the Beer Guide.  Hoorah !

What a magnificent entrance to a pub.

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Wow

The tiling is so good you could be in Bewdley (or central Manchester).

At the bar we saw three beers we’d never heard of, and a man (the Landlord) perched on one of the bar stools proceeded to give us an enthusiastic run-through of the beers.

It was genuine and we were impressed, picking the Salopian and the house beer.

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Too dark to read the clips

There were two youngish couples in, so we sat in the middle to eavesdrop on domestic arguments increase the average age by 27.

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Rare picture of Charles

A simple modern pub menu (flatbreads), fresh flowers, music from 1986 (Cameo) and Snowy the Tin Tin dog (no idea) give you a clue about the feel.

So it pains me to say this but, despite those lacings, the beer was dull. Well, the house beer was (NBSS 2).  Charles got little further with his half of Salopian than what you see below, and you know how good Salopian is.

Cheryl, the clever half of Coldwell Craft Capers had recommended the keg Arbor, and that was cool and lovely. #CaskIsDead-6.8%.  Not that I saw much of any beer pulled.

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Lacings

I was happy to just leave my pint half-drunk, but Charles was keen to let the pub know the beer was “tepid”.  Very politely.

In case you think it’s just me, read Mudgie’s report from lunchtime (here).  Citra’s report is slightly more generous and, frankly, has better photos than I managed.

Still gorgeous though.

We chose our curry house by the usual measure of looking through the window to see which one had most customers in.

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Simple but satisfying

Well cooked pappadoms, onion bhajias and Dhansak for less than a tenner at Delhi Spice.  Dick and Dave can add it to their list.  Tellingly, the best banter of the day came here;

“Why would she have a cannibal in the house ?”

“I’ve never heard of a vegetarian snake”

In the morning we woke, cleared away the Brew Dog cans littering the apartment, and left the key in the little holder outside.

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The Jewel

Our attempt to climb the Cathedral tower to walk off the curry ended at the barrier (micro pub opening hours), but Worcester looked imperious in the morning sunshine.

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Future micro pub
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Fussy interior
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Lovely

And that was it.  Great city, good company, decent pubs, inconsistent beer.

Oh, here’s that phone number you wanted, Charles.

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Published by retiredmartin

Retired NHS, doing long walks around UK and the world to record the great bits. Focused on Good Beer Guide pubs and live music.

39 thoughts on “IT PAINS ME TO SAY THIS, BUT…”

  1. It looks as if for the evening they had got out the oversized pint glasses.
    What looks like a DBA pumpclip is probably the Animal London Porter.
    I suspect that the “fussy interior” you found the next day was influenced by the Paul Pry.

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  2. “The tiling is so good you could be in Bewdley (or central Manchester)” but there’s actually some lovely tiling a bit like that on the Victorian waiting room at Worcester’s Shrub Hill station.

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  3. Loved the pub and yes the beer was average, though I didn’t find it quite as poor as the other commentators did, maybe my forays into uber hopped craft beers have seen off the subtle side of my taste buds, once and for all.

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  4. Election day 2015, the fateful date which set the country on a disastrous course of self-harm; and all because a certain politician’s ego was a hundred times greater than his intellect!

    Not a day that those who care deeply for Britain’s future will wish to remember with any great affection.

    ps. Hobson’s beer is a very apt choice, under the current circumstances.

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    2. Well at least young Martin leaves up a political post in the comments section even though he might not agree with the sentiments expressed.
      Unlike the poster on his own blog.

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      2. Well, if you think declining to provide a platform for irrelevant political grandstanding and malicious personal attacks constitutes a restriction on freedom of speech, then so be it.

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      3. But there’s a political question at the root of most things. I’d guess that the Tory-stoked housing bubble, austerity, and inequality, have closed more pubs than Labour’s smoking ban or health advice, for instance. That’s without even considering their closure of heavy industries. And Prof, you don’t know what other blog owners don’t even publish, do you?

        Whatever, I once had a very mysterious experience in a pub in Worcester, which I’ll perhaps describe anon.

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      5. Well, I’ll set it up, Martin.

        A few years back, about half-a-dozen of us, on a job – a random assortment from the firm – were pre-booked into a riverside pub, which did rooms. I’d never visited Worcester before, let alone this pub. We checked in around 1700. We were greeted by a middle-aged red-haired lady. As we passed down the narrow entrance corridor, she stopped each one of us in turn, and studied us carefully. “Don’t know you” she said to the first, and to the second, rather flatly. When it was my turn, she said “I know you” quite emphatically, but not in a good way, to be honest. She claimed to know the sixth as well, but would not say from where. None of us could recall her from anywhere on the other hand, and we were each from various parts of the country. This lady had lived in Worcestershire for all of her life too. She did seem very faintly familiar to me though.

        The explanation is quite simple, but it hinges on an extraordinary faculty that some people have, and unconscious assumptions that we all make.

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      7. No, she didn’t have poison spring-blades in the toes of her shoes, Martin, although there was something of a resemblance to Rosa Klebb. Your description is perhaps a metaphor, for many of us leaving that firm, however.

        The wrong assumptions that we made included thinking, that when someone says that they have always lived in Worcestershire, then that meant in or close to the county town, where we were then. We also assumed, that because she recognised more than one of us, that she knew us both from the same occasion. Furthermore, we did not allow for the fact that some people’s memories for faces might be worlds better than our own.

        Our firm had a training establishment in another Worcestershire town, about fifteen miles away. It’s county never registered with us. We had each, separately, over the years, passed through it. We would drink in the town centre pubs of an evening, but it must have been ten years at least since the last of us had been there. This lady simply happened to run one of its pubs back then.

        If you’re in the gig economy, seeing countless faces in your life as you go from town-to-town, then it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you are as invisible to all those people as they might be to you. But in quiet places you’d probably be wrong.

        Also, in a “barracks town”, the visitors are not always popular as a group, deservedly or otherwise.

        It’s cause for reflection.

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  5. It pains me to say this, but… We walked by Delhi Spice to get to Rajkot. Seems DS has a better rating on TripAdvisor.

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    2. Bit of advice Dick – if you want a decent curry stick to GOC, not neccessarily Bratfud neither, although it is the epicentre. As with fish and chips, I’ve been stung too many times south of Dronfield. Birmingham can be good for a ruby too.

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  7. Pingback: Paul Pry, Worcester – beerleeds.co.uk

    2. This is tragic news indeed, and it takes me back many years, to the untimely passing of one very well-loved hostelryman, Bob Halford, in Nottingham, at the age of thirty-seven.

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