Yesterday afternoon I was feeling a bit down, by my usual permanently upbeat standards.
Storm Eunice was heading to the same place as me (the Ibis Budget in Newport and then across the Severn to Bath) and as it turns out all Welsh trains were cancelled, so if I’d travelled I’d have been stuck for two (2) days drinking Bass in the Pen & Wig.
Anyone heading south to Wales today must be very, very brave. Or from Blackpool.
You won’t believe this, but literally 20 seconds after sending that, I bumped into young Will on Daniel Hill.
He hadn’t seen my message, and it took me nearly 0.7 seconds to persuade him to postpone his shopping in favour of a pint. I am VERY persuasive.
We went in the nearest Guide pub.
I hadn’t been in the Wellington since Covid restrictions were fully lifted. It’s one of the Kelham Klassics, I guess, just outside the city centre and nearly always busy with cask men and women.
Actually, it had just opened, and the left hand room was filling up, so I got my first look in there for 20 years when it was the Cask & Cutler.
Still no Bass, despite the misleading adverts that CAMRA should do something about rather than putting on beer festivals (joking, joking).
Blimey, the Blonde is a gorgeous pint, cool and crisp. You could bring your Sheffield visitor here, or the Blake, or the Fat Cat etc etc and say “THIS ! This is what cask beer can taste like young man !“.
If I had exclaimed that the rest of the pub would have looked at me oddly, hiding behind the lacings.
This blogging lark is a doddle when you have an early Victorian pub, Bass memorabilia and lacings, isn’t it ?
Just as well, as I took no notes but I think Will was overjoyed/distraught at Luton Town only being 10th in the Championship. Cheer up Will, you could be a City fan.
retiredmartin 
A right gem! Northern pubs as we all love.
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Somebody should make it compulsory for CAMRA beer festivals to stock Bass.
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East Anglian Fest (Bury) had Bass the last one I went too. And the Cambridge Fest served Greene King IPA well into the 21st century before deciding that an award winning beer was “dishwater”.
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Well I wouldn’t argue too much about GK, but some trad beers should be properly promoted, especially those wa prominent Burton snatch.
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It’s all true, folks. Sheffield is the biggest village in the land.
Actually, to be fair, it didn’t take 0.7 seconds for Martin to persuade me to go for a beer – as soon as I saw him walking down Daniel Hill, my planned shopping trip had bitten the dust. He just had that look about him that said he was short of material to put on his blog. How could I say no?
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That’s actually true about the lack of material.
On Trip Advisor, Grenoside would be a “city”, so makes sense that Sheff is a village.
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