What enters your head when you enter a pub and see the scene above ?
- Get out the ******* way
- What’s wrong with sitting at tables anyway ?
- Ooh, is that “Side Pocket For A Toad” ?
All 3 from me as I finish the Luton Airport mini-crawl in the Fox at Darley Hall. There’s actually a bar with real ale from Greene King at the airport, and it opens at 3am, which might even be early enough for Stafford Mudge.
The Fox is a plain village pub that also seems to be the village, existing mainly for the benefit of plane tickers (somewhere below twitchers on the sociopathic scale).
Anyway, it’s the “Most Improved” pub in the branch, which often means they’ve added some homebrew to the IPA.
I squeeze in between the barflies blocking the pumps and the man with G&T, (like the Specials song) my second G&T of the week. Gin lasts longer than cask, remember.
Now,the photo below may look like one of those staged shots from a naff holiday brochure from 1977, but I assure you it’s real.
I couldn’t read the pumps, but I can makeout the Tring clip a mile away. Rubbish name, distinctive design.
Actually, I went for the 3 Brewers from St Albans first. It had just gone.
“Ooh, have to be quicker than that mate, beer here sells like hotcakes” said GinMan. Why weren’t you drinking it, then ?
The beer was really good (NBSS 3.5), the pub is cheery, the locals chatty. Sadly, the seating is a massive letdown.
Without anywhere suitable to sit, I took my half out to the chickens, and contemplated challenging them to a game of 5 a side.
Duncan would, no doubt, have recorded it as a new ground.
retiredmartin 
It’s The Three Brewers from St. Albans, rather that Two; though the addition of the extra one doesn’t improve their beers (IMO). And shall raise your Plane Ticking, as returning from the McMullen’s Open Day on Saturday, with the fella seen from my train carriage window, on his hands and knees on the platform at Rye House so he take a photo of the number on the next carriage up. What was wrong with the number on my carriage? Bloody Tickers ;-).
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Two Brewers is a pub I think, perhaps a jolly one.
Yes, tickers indeed. How many grounds have you visited ?
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Ticking is one of those irregular verbs: he/(rarely) she/they are obsessive-compulsives; you are a bit of an anorak; I/we are collectors of interesting new experiences :-).
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“Opens at 3am” is what we want,
Then it’s only eleven minutes on the train from Luton Airport Parkway to St Albans City – and Tim’s “barn of barns” Waterend Barn opens at 8am.
I will be making my excuses and leaving by about 3pm !
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Thanks for reminding me why I left the area. There must be a college with a training course for bar blocking on the Herts/Beds border.
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And in West London/Surrey borders.
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Amazing what you can do with those pre-set filters on your phone.
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“Side Pocket For A Toad”, surely the daftest name ever for a beer.
As for the staged holiday brochure shot, and keeping the location in mind as well, “I’m Mandy, fly me” has to be the correct description.
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Very good Paul.
Yes, a daft name but oddly you get accustomed to daft names after a while.
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I know you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but Tring Brewery went right down in my estimation when they came up with these daft names for their beers.
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I know exactly what you mean 👍
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Visited in the dark well towards the end of the evening and didn’t see that ground- damn. Had my access to and from the bar completely blocked by all the remaining customers forming (then re-forming) a semi-circle around the entrance. They were enjoying themselves and obviously had been for some time but rarely have I felt as casually excluded in a pub, though the service when you got to the bar was fine. Had to ask twice to get through their cordon. Sure the experience would have been completely different at another time.
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Well, casually excluded is a lovely turn of phrase, exactly as I felt. Lack of proper seating a real issue. Pub along Severn in Forest of Dean exactly the same. Of course, if the pub didn’t put seats at the bar they wouldn’t sit there 😱
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“…I took my half out to the chickens…”
Makes a change from chucking it down the carsey.
I’ll keep an eye open for a newspaper article about pub’s chickens being poisoned !
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Chickens prefer Budweiser.
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