One week to go before Lockdown 2 ends !
Given our singular obsession with the R rate, you might look at the following table,
and assume the North-West will be in Tier 1 when the tiers are announced on Thursday so I can head back north for pints of Holt’s in the Hare & Hounds. Yeah, right.
I’ve started a couple of posts on short local walks, in Hilton and Fulbourn, but they were SO dull they’ve been sent straight to the trash. In 50 years time some as-yet-unborn blogger will attempt to finish them.
So I’ve two potential ideas for posts today. One where I write about beer, like these two craft cans I bought in Ancoats General Store yesterday;
and a second with highlights from Bathams pubs.
Well, that was an easy choice.
One of the great beers, rarely seen in the free trade, and their dozen (and growing) pubs have never disappointed. Troublingly, I’ve only been to a few Bathams houses since starting this blog.
In fact, the BEST Bathams I’ve had wasn’t even in a Bathams pub. And it wasn’t the Great Western in Wolves, either.
The Outlaw certainly thought so.
And possibly the Southworths as well. I scored it a 4, twice. If you do one trip to the UK, make it Bewdley.
Mrs RM was converted to the cause at the poshest pub of the dozen.
The Swan, Chaddesley Corbett, one of those villages that tries to deny an acquaintance with Bromsgrove and almost gets away with it.
Mrs RM got a lot of stares while drinking her pint of nectar while I drank coke. They survived her stare back.
Six old well dressed chaps sunk a dozen pints and discussed cabriolets, lunch, bowling greens and the respective qualities of the two barmaids (not pictured).
Bathams have a few pubs in smart villages which are owned by ’70s rock legends (the village, not the pub), but head into the Black Country proper for your real legends.
Bull & Bladder aka Vine, Brierley Hill (or is it the other way round ?)
A long overdue revisit a couple of years ago where the company and the cob (roll/bap etc) actually beat the beer.
Try walking that lot off.
For a full(er) list, here’s Mappiman . He knows his Batham’s.
We managed to visit the cellar in the Bull & Bladder last year and got to see the amazing Hogsheads (54 gallons just in case anyone wonders) that they serve the bitter from. Even crazier they get though ONE a day in the pub. The poor old mild was in a firkin where it sold one every couple of days on average.
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Tony,
There’s many a pub, some in the Good Beer Guide, that would be delighted if they could shift a firkin “every couple of days on average”.
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Impressive stuff. Didn’t Holt have a similar claim.
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Martin,
Yes. Banks’s, Bathams and Holts are the three I remember as famous for hogsheads, though I’m not suggesting they were the only ones.
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Over the years, I’ve been to six Batham’s pubs, which constitutes 75% of their original eight. The problem is that they’re all in places that you wouldn’t normally go to unless your specific objective was to visit that pub.
Like Sam Smith’s pubs, they have what some might see as a slightly “odd” atmosphere with a singular devotion to beer drinking.
When I was a student, I remember going in the Lamp Tavern in Dudley and buying a bag of pork scratchings and finding it contained one single huge scratching rather resembling a trotter 😮
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T’other Mudgie,
I’m not normally one to disagree with you but how can “a singular devotion to beer drinking” be “odd”?
“One single huge scratching rather resembling a trotter” reminds me of one single huge scratching that was a pig’s nipple, probably even rarer.
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I’m not normally one to disagree with you, Paul, though I do see Mudgie’s perspective that some pubs can be too full of “beer men” !
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Odd by the general standards of pubs, not in absolute terms 😛
And they are full of people who like drinking beer, as opposed to “beer enthusiasts”. I remember being struck when I went in the Royal Exchange in Stourbridge in the evening in March 2017 by the extremely high proportion of customers, young and old, both sexes, who were drinking the same beer. You wouldn’t see that in any other pubs. Hence the hogsheads 😀
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I guess the average age of drinkers in the Vine on a Friday night is a good 10 years younger than in the Boar’s Head !
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I’d say in the Royal Exchange it was twenty years younger – mid 40s as opposed to mid 60s.
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T’other Mudgie,
Yes indeed, and “full of people who like drinking beer as opposed to ‘beer enthusiasts'” is a sure sign of a Proper Pub.
And yes in.”places that you wouldn’t normally go to unless your specific objective was to visit that pub” which is why Mrs Mudgie drove me round them for researching the article for that BEER magazine. It should be remembered though that Bathams have tended to open pubs nearer railway stations and if this had been a ‘normal’ year I would have put on the “Where and when ….” topic a Proper Day Out including the King Arthur (Hagley), Bird in Hand, Royal Exchange and Unicorn (Stourbridges) and Holdens’s Shrubbery Cottage and Waterfall. And another Proper Day Out on the tram for Holdens and Heritage pubs in Bilston, Wednesbury and West Bromwich plus a couple of my favourites in Birmingham and of course the Great Western.
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Martin,
I can’t comment on Friday nights but there’s been a decent range of age groups in the Vine on a weekday lunchtime.
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The Vine is closest to a community pub of the ones I’ve been to, certainly.
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Ugh ! Rather big itch to scratch then.
You make a good point about location; Shenstone (Worcs not Staff) is a sod to get to on public transport, and southern Dudley is poorly served by trains.
And I know what you mean about a singular devotion to beer drinking, which tends to exclude the younger folk I like to see in pubs.
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The Lamp Tavern, my sole Batham’s pub, I’m sorry to say!
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Good one, though. B & B, too.
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In 1979 the Lamp was spectacularly basic!
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As is Dudley town centre, still !
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They’re very disdainful of Brummies in the Vine.
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John,
But they might not have met ‘our’ Pete.
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The Bathams was excellent. Bewdley is a must visit. And maybe Robert will make an appearance while one is at the Waggon and Horses!
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I’m sure that cob ‘n’ crisps combo would count as a substancial repast, it could certainly keep you going for a good few pints during a pub visit.
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“Given our singular obsession with the R rate, you might look at the following table,”
I tried to look up R rate online. After wading thru the classification of movies I came across something somewhat pertinent. All I can say is no wonder we have the MMR vaccine (Measles, Mumps, Rubella). They are all in the top 5 for worst R rates!
Oh sorry, this is about Covid isn’t it? After putting on my thinking cap I can safely say that the current R rate is perfect for acquiring herd immunity. 😉
“and a second with highlights from Bathams pubs.”
*checks title*
I’m guessing you went with the second one? 🙂
“The Outlaw certainly thought so.”
Blimey. I remember that photo!
“The Swan, Chaddesley Corbett”
That’s definitely a posh town name!
“Mrs RM got a lot of stares while drinking her pint of nectar while I drank coke. They survived her stare back.”
Obviously she wasn’t at her best. 😉
“and the respective qualities of the two barmaids (not pictured).”
A man can dream. 🙂
“A long overdue revisit a couple of years ago where the company and the cob (roll/bap etc) actually beat the beer.”
In the photo above; a cheese and onion cob with… cheese and onion crisps? Original!
“He knows his Batham’s.”
It’s the British way. There’s someone who knows a lot of one thing. Be it Bass, Batham’s or how to build church replicas out of matchsticks. The Brits are the world’s best at stuff like that. 😉
Cheers
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Cob and crisps matching is my specialty.
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