More short posts compiled using complimentary WiFi, drinking warm Otter somewhere in the Blackdown Hills.
And more posts from award winning Yorkshire gastropubs with too many beers for the cask custom.
Let’s not be churlish. The Bay Horse is gorgeous, with brilliant views,
and cutting-edge technology.
It’s got pots and pans dangling from the ceiling in the modern (for 1977) style,
and it’s clear you’ve left the safety of hipster Malton for a Proper Dining Pub.
Everyone was dining. No one bought a pint of cask while I was there, soft drinks all round.
Eight diners, eight pumps, it doesn’t stand a chance.
The All Hallows Dark was cool but tasteless, the epitome of competently kept (2.5).
“But why would you visit a dining pub on a midweek lunchtime and expect top cask?”
Cos that’s when people visit it, that’s why.
“Just for future reference, do you serve any beer that’s Gluten free?” asked Gemima.
“The Hambleton?” I offered from the safety of my comfy seat. There I go, mansplaining again. I was ignored.
And rightly so.
retiredmartin 
You see that’s the problem with tickers who focus on a narrow epoque. Pubs like this have traditionally supplied vittles to travellers and a scant local trade. How many houses out there within 10 miles? There will never have been a lunch time trade without food and how do you get there unless you drive? I understand this pub to be a destination venue and would agree there are probably too many beers on but the people have to earn a living, in a 21st century, extremely rural pub, that includes lunchtime food and soft drinks.
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Of course it does, but if that’s the case they should only have one or two beers on the bar rather than eight.
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Maybe the eight beers are to tempt a perceived audience, certainly worked by getting them in GBG?
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But not a good campaigning tool if it’s not serving beer at its very best. It wasn’t bad, just not good.
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No. But no one will not nominate their full allocation – an assumption there are x number of GBG pubs in an area
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all the time
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I have to admire young Martin’s resilience.
Week in,week out he delivers us tales of duff beer and dull pubs with only the occasional nugget that stands out in the vast swathes of average drinking places.
And these are just the GBG pubs which you hope would be a cut above the average boozer so there must be thousands of really crap pubs out there selling really crap beer.
I think my soul would be crushed with so much effort required to find so few great pubs.
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The problem is that he’s already been to most of the good ones. But the occasional gem does sometimes manage to slip in – see Oswestry recently.
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Exactly. I get jealous seeing Simon visiting these Derbyshire classics every week.
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So out of interest then Martin, do you find better beer when you visit regions where you haven’t completed the guide previously? Are the entries which have only just made it, possibly transiently, offering poorer quality beer than those which are regular/permanent entries but which you are now less likely to have to tick off?
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With all due disrespect, beer quality in most of Scotland, Wales (including the cities), N. Ireland and Lincolnshire is a complete lottery.
BUT I’d rather be in an Aberdeen or West Wales pub right now than in Cambridge where turnover still generally guarantees a good pint.
On the wider point, “transient new entries” is typically perceptive of you, Scott. New entries rarely as good on beer quality as longstanding ones.
The exception is micros/small bars which are often reliable, albeit unsatisfactory places to drink.
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There are mate. That’s why so many are closing. You have to move with the times.
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And maybe moving with the times means having one or two popular cask beers that we all recognise.
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If that works, yes. Not sure it does in pubs like this, people like to see something they are confident with but what they perceive as being a bit better. Mind you there are two excellent new wave brewers in nearby Malton who are rarely seen, if ever, OTB in the run of the mill pubs in the town.
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Moving with the times perhaps means recognising that among the under-forties, it is the females with the edge on spending power. That’s not necessarily bad news for cask – my daughter and her friends drink it at least.
But that might best mean turning the TVs away from football or boxing to something else (sorry, you boxing enthusiasts among the ladies, but you’re probably a minority). And a menu other than chips-with-everything. (S.A. Brain take note). Males, other than the rowdies, would probably heave a huge sigh of relief too.
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Etu,
Yes, best turn the TV off completely to avoid any arguments.
And I never thought that chips went well with black pudding or pickled eggs.
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Oh, plenty of great pubs. And the travel is half the adventure.
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What’s Asahi Seafarers doing that far north?
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Blown off course.
It’s the Gales.
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👍
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Site of secret advance trade negotiations for British-Japanese trade deal, out of sight of EU bureaucrats. Storage facility for imported thousand year eggs to be set up in Scagglethorpe.
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👍👍👍
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Surely thousand year old eggs are a Chinese delicacy, not Japanese?
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Going back to number of beers on sale, my own view for what it’s worth is that if a cask can’t be sold in a couple of days then it shouldn’t have been put on in the first place. However, I have heard from landlords that some CAMRA branches appear to make GBG selections based on number of handpumps, putting ‘choice’ before quality. A greater number of beers does mean that it is unlikely that each one has been tried on a regular basis by GBG ‘Surveyors’ . I haven’t been ‘active’ in CAMRA since the 90s but I get the impression that despite the rapid increase in membership in recent years there has been little impact in people actually doing the legwork. Sites like yours often give a better view of pubs in an area than can be gleaned from the GBG.
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Thanks Ian. Reading the CAMRA magazines, excellent as they are, the attention is all on new guest beers, beer festivals and LocAles, and reports of disappointment at a brewery owning selling its own beers in its own pubs.
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“And more posts from award winning Yorkshire gastropubs”
I see by the WhatPub map that Thorpe fellow really got around!
“and cutting-edge technology.”
I could definitely see me cutting myself if I tried to use that!
“It’s got pots and pans dangling from the ceiling in the modern”
And boots from the window frame. At least it’s not bras and knickers.
“Eight diners, eight pumps, it doesn’t stand a chance.”
Oof.
“Cos that’s when people visit it, that’s why.”
Good point. Although, to be fair, that’s not when ‘beer’ folk visit. 😉
““The Hambleton?””
Well, since gluten free are made with rice or corn you could also have said Bud.* 🙂
(the American one, not the Czech one)
Cheers
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Interesting point about “beer” folk not visiting at lunchtime. This is a remote pub half an hour from York, I bet they don’t get much trade from visiting beer folk, I’ll bet it’s all dining custom bar the bus trip to present the Pub of the Season award.
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“beer folk not visiting at lunchtime”
Yes, there’s too many Yorkie lie-ins nowadays.
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If local CAMRA really cared about cask they’d organise 10am trips out to rural pubs to drink all the range so it’s fresh for tickers like me.
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Unfortunately the first bus isn’t until 11:30 on the third Wednesday of the month. Return is at 4pm on the second Tuesday.
Although I’d have thought the truly off the beaten track pubs are going to get so few visits that they would struggle to get enough votes/scores to trouble the GBG.
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People use beer scores to decide GBG entries, you say?
What’s wrong with that long-standing metric involving discounts, free sandwiches and the number of pumps?
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Great pub …one or two cask more than enough!!
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I know I’m being a typical American tourist type when I say this, but man, that is one lovely pub interior. If I had a place like that near me, I’d be there on a very regular basis. (Though mediocre beer might temper that a bit!)
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I thought you’d like that one!
And beer was definitely OK, just nothing special. Perhaps OK is no longer OK 🤔
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