ALL ACTION IN BELPER

Lots of short posts today, as I battle with the Wi-Fi between Eccles and Stoke, two names to raise the spirits on a Thursday morning.

Yes, actual Eccles cakes IN Eccles. They may have to replace Doom Bar if the demand-fuelled DB shortage carries on any longer.

Part I of last Thursday’s Old Codger (Sheffield Chapter) trip to bucolic Belper, with a pre-emptive and an actual new GBG tick to start off, followed by lots of Pedigree.

After that diversion in the Brunswick the Famous Five (Go Pubbing, a classic book) caught the 13:34 from Derby,

(no idea why they’re every sixty-ONE minutes)

and before we’d had time to put our review on Pubs Galore (joke !) we’d arrived in a town of 21,823 souls still recovering from a BRAPA visit in 2019.

Sheffield Hatter had carried out a reconnaissance mission a month or so earlier, and gave a written guarantee on Pubs Galore headed notepaper that there’d be new pubs worth doing. Pretty much straight out the station, the Devonshire looked a good bet.

Though the award of “Best Contemporary Gastro” might cause some alarm,

and their own description as “A period travel inn steeped in history has been brought up to date with quirkiness and peculiarity.” won’t have the Mudgies beating a path to the door.

But there was a friendly welcome to the post-lunch crowd, some decent low level seating in the corner,

and a decent pint of Pedi, cool and well presented if not sulphurous (NBSS 3) to start the day.

I noted no-one else was on the pints. Why always me ?

Some nice wall displays; Stafford Paul will remember the first CAMRA beer festival when a choice of Bass, Pedi, Youngs Ordinary and Barry’s Old Groper was sufficient to bring thousands to Covent Garden.

But I seemed more distracted by Barry the T-Rex, an installation representing the 28%.

A solid start, if perhaps not quite the guaranteed pre-emptive I’d hoped for. Across the road, Pump It Up, inspired by the recent Olivia Rodrigo hit “Brutal”*, wasn’t open, being a micro and all.

So we bravely walked past the famous Belper chippy and headed for the actual new GBG entry.

*Keep up at the back

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.

7 thoughts on “ALL ACTION IN BELPER”

  3. Quite like The Devonshire…part of the boy Roper’s chain that used to include The Silk Mill & Exeter Arms and still includes the Crossing at Burton…
    You know what you’re getting decent food, decent beer and he usually saves pubs in decline….
    Belper is magnificent

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  4. I just wanted to jump in here to say I chuckled at the Olivia Rodrigo joke. I gather Elvis Costello publicly said he didn’t mind the similarity between the two songs, but maybe he’s just angling towards a duets album with her. 😉

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  6. “Stafford Paul will remember the first CAMRA beer festival when a choice of Bass, Pedi, Youngs Ordinary and Barry’s Old Groper was sufficient to bring thousands to Covent Garden”.
    Well, no, instead I was on holiday in Cornwall including my first visit to the Seven Stars in Falmouth on Tuesday 9th September and second visit to the Blue Anchor at Helston on Wednesday 10th.
    I must admit that the first London Beer Festival I got to was at Alexandra Palace in 1972, an absolute waste of time as it was a keg event and nothing to do with CAMRA which as a seventeen year old I hadn’t then joined.
    https://www.beeretseq.com/britains-beer-festival-on-film-1972/

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