PUB FOR GUY

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Celebrity pubs, eh ?  Nearly as dreadful as celebrity beers.

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R.I.P.

Still, I was excited to visit Guy Martin‘s pub in Kirmington, Greater Grimsby, keen to see if he’d kept any Madonna memorabilia in the divorce settlement.

Oh, sorry, that’s Ritchie. (I genuinely thought they were the same person). This Guy is a famous biker, apparently.

Kirmington
Actually closer to Immingham

Look closely and you’ll see the pub has its own airport for celebrity arrivals like Duncan.

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The Marrowbone & Cleaver is run by Guy’s sister, who keeps a small village pub open from 11.30 – 23.00, a tremendous effort in 2019 half-hearted Britain.

At 14.30 on a Thursday in March, that means keeping it open for half a dozen professional drinkers with any fish and chips trade long gone.  Did I ever tell you I once drove to Grimsby from Cambridge after work just for fish and chips and a Scunthorpe sunset ?

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Obligatory World Cup ’66 picture

It doesn’t overplay the motorcycling angle, but definitely feels a bit sports bar and all the better for it.

Nothing twee about the conversation at the bar, all derived from the pages of the North Lincs Examiner.

“Grimsby man arrested for ********* on his aunt’s ****”.

“It’s always Grimsby”

“Aye”

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Even 3 beers seems a bit ambitious in the land of Strongbow Dark Fruits. The one with the celebrity pump clip was clearly the one to avoid, so I had that.

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That’s a tough choice

The garden in the Grimsby sun is a highlight, almost adding a 0.5 NBSS to a disappointing Batemans house beer that is the epitome of mid-week Lincolnshire.

A well-run pub, whatever the GBG credentials.

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All places Duncan has seen non-league football at.

It’s not even summer yet, but beer quality has taken a distinct turn for the worse, and it’s entirely to do with turnover.

Of course, some pubs will hide their slow-moving beer by just not opening at all, but that just makes it worse when they do.

Still, I had great hopes for the Spurn peninsula.

 

NB Yes, I’d been listening to a lot of Elton John on the way up. Bernie Taupin was born in Sleaford, you know.

 

 

 

 

 

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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.

31 thoughts on “PUB FOR GUY”

  2. And again we ask, how did this pub make into the GBG, unless you’re unlucky enough to visit all these places on the one day of the year that the beer is below par?

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    1. Two things tend to happen when I write these honest reports;

      1) Someone will berate me for not taking a below-par half back in a locals pub. See my experiences of doing that outside of Spoons.
      2) I’ll do my GBG spreadsheet in September and note how many pubs have dropped out where I commented on quality and turnover.

      Just for balance, if I drank Strongbow or lager like the bulk of the locals do this would be a terrific pub. But there’s clearly not the turnover to get through 3 beers in 3 days in 80% of village pubs these days.

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      1. “Below par” isn’t the same as “returnable”, though. And personally I’d never bother taking back a duff half in a pub I’m unlikely to ever visit again. Just put it down to experience.

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      2. That’s spot on. I was somewhere between 1.5 and 2 with that one. Not enjoyable but the regulars would no doubt have sipped it and said “real ale, that’s what it’s supposed to taste like”. I’ve probably only had one recommendable pint of Batemans in the last 15 years and that was in a Grantham Spoons.

        I guess there’s an issue about the cutoff we want for GBG entries. Is it “just good enough” or “good enough to recommend”. I suspect the Southworths know the difference.

        Usual caveats about midweek and weekend apply, though my Lincs Sunday pubs weren’t great.

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      5. I used to be quite fond of Batemans back in the 90’s, but they seemed to develop a consistent aftertaste of apple about 20 years ago, and I haven’t really enjoyed anything from them since. Going down the Donnington route?

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      6. Ooh. Much too harsh. Actually, the Waggon & Horses in York is the other banker for Batemans, probably sell 20-30 pints an hour, rather than a week. Lincolnshire rural pubgoing been dying steadily for a few decades.

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      7. Has craft keg reached the extremities of the UK? Has it much reach outside city centres? If not, would it really make much difference to what you drank in rural pubs, unless Carling was acceptable?

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      8. Craft keg has indeed reached the extremities of the UK, at least the extremity where I am, the Shetland Islands. Punk IPA is quite common and the local Lerwick Brewery makes it. We even have a couple of bars where craft keg is all you’ll get. Cask on the other hand is vanishingly rare.

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      10. Shetland is probably more like Ireland, in that the lack of reach of cask creates a bigger opportunity for craft keg.

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    2. At least internally within CAMRA, we could do with more transparency as to which branches make active use of NBSS when making GBG selections. I’d accept that branches with a wide rural area could make a few “lucky dips” without an adequate number of scores, but if you’re not using it at all there’s something wrong.

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      1. Lots of discussion about this on Discord, of course. Tends to split between branches like Stockport, Cambridge and Reading who promote and use NBSS in formal way, and quite a few branches which have so few credible scores that NBSS practically irrelevant,

        Also, I suspect from our crawls that you and I and (say) the Southworths have a different view of NBSS 3 to some Scottisg or Welsh branches where a 3 is “acceptable” rather than good. Even on your best Staggers you rarely score more 3.5s than 3s.

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  4. I rather like Guy Martin.
    He strikes me as just the right sort of bloke tinkering about with a motorbike in his shed nutter who unwittingly becomes a TV star but still retains his character.
    I imagine he’s a Brexiteer.
    Salt of the earth.
    He’s proper quick on a motorbike as well.

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      2. Sadly I’ve only just got the Elton John Pub for Guy reference.
        Well played young Martin.

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      3. It wasn’t meant to a tenuous reference to local hero Bernie Taupin, if honest; I’d just left home with only Elton’s Greatest CD and that was in my head at the time.

        I always thought (i.e. in 1978 I did) that Song for Guy was about a gorilla. Scarily, it turns out to be about a motorcycle delivery boy who died, making my blog title even more brilliant than usual.

        I miss Russ.

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      4. Yes, I’d far rather have a pint with him than with Rees-Mogg, IDS, or with John Redwood too. How about Arlene Foster for a bit of merry banter too?

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