As Dick and Dave will confirm, the area of the Midlands west of the M5 and over to the Shropshire hills is as good as it gets in terms of beauty, Balti, and, er, bostin’ beer.
And there’s still much to be discovered; only last year the Lion O’Morfe near Bridgnorth appeared as if from nowhere as a new classic.
The stretch of A491/A449 from Stourbridge to Wolves is as posh as the “Black Country” gets (“It’s NOT the Black Country !” screams someone in Tipton), but the Banks’s Marston’s pubs keep it honest.
A bit plain for some tastes,
but Wall Heath’s Horse & Jockey screams Proper Pub as you enter into an alternate universe to the Brum world of Embers and Brunning & Prices.
Just remember, always head for the bar, not the lounge.
Wall seating, beer mats, blokes with pints, sheepskin jacket and Puma sweatshirt.
Beers you’ve heard of, all comfortingly brewed close by, mostly in a lovely beer factory rather than under a mouldy railway arch.
No need for jam jars here.
A foaming half of Mild, which I’d actually assumed was now called something like “Sunset” or “Oldie”, but actually still retains the classic pump clip denied the Bitter these days.
All you need there for a late lunch. Just £2.75, or a third of a pint of 1664 in Parisian money. Cool, foamy, NBSS 3.5 and a thumbs-up for the cob.
Oh look, it’s gone.
Sky debates the Premier League, Lilly Allen debates her duff boyfriends, tradesmen debate BREXIT. That’s all you can ask from a pub, surely ?
I’ll leave BeerMat to explain this weird fascination with Peaky Blinders.
retiredmartin 
That’s enough alliteration – Ed.
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The quarry tile floor is the sign of the Bar in a Proper Banks’s Pub.
With so many pubs now having reproduction fireplaces it’s nice that that “Design classic” – like the one in Rugeley’s Red Lion – has been retained. And there are proper dogs besides it rather than those little fake antique looking ones sometimes seen on a mantelpiece in gentrified dining pubs.
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Quarry tiles…definitely in top 10 of proper pub requirements or ‘real’ flagstones.
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Examining the photos carefully, it appears that Lager was the tipple of choice? The locals always know best don’t they.
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Methinks the Carling on the bar is outnumbered by the two Enville Ales near the window.
Three pints isn’t though a large enough sample to be statistically relevant.
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Yes, was going to say the Enville seemed to be popular there.
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And committed to quality local cask beers, four from seven miles away and one from six miles away.
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Much like every other “normal” pub.
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Exactly!
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We do concur and look forward to returning to the area in October.
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And here I was starting to think all you had left to tick were micros…
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Never ever been to Wall Heath!!! However, in a rare serious interlude….Brum often feels hard done by as usually ignored see Manchester BBC and Leeds CH4 and the fact it missed out on Commonwealth Games/Olympics and has only been called in now as last minute reserve….so, even though it has a cosmopolitan big city feel to it nowadays and all the associated glamour, it still has a parochial element to it that makes it revere ‘one of its own.’ As such, Steven Knight is a hero across the city as he has promoted Birmingham and invested money back in the city and done it against all the odds so that, as well as it being a top series, is why Peaky Blinders is appreciated in Birmingham…
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LAF,
The Wall Heath Tavern, an Allied Breweries pub then, was the first Wall Heath pub I used and that must be nearly thirty years ago as it was not long after I met my wife.
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Is this your original neck of the woods??
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LAF,
No, I grew up in Cannock and moved to Stafford as an eighteen year old in 1973.
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Interesting. Thanks for that. Always though Brum needed an equivalent of Tony Wilson (Mr Manc).
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Absolutely! It would be great for the city
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For a few years Banks’s Mild was re-badged “Original” until they thought better. So there’s hope for “Amber” yet.
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I remember when there was a proper distinction between their two beers, Banks’s Mild Ale and Banks’s Bitter Beer.
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If that’s you Paul, then something seems to have happened to the comments settings.
The page no longer remembers your form entries, and you don’t need an email address or anything else it seems. However, you will need to re-enter your name for every comment.
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I think we recognise a comment by Paul when we see one !
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Etu,
Yes, soon after making a few comments I noticed they were shown as “Anonymous”.
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“I think we recognise a comment by Paul when we see one”
Methinks you better recognise a comment by P P-T when you see one.
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