A short post, because I like to keep the pubs in these pieces separate, just in case I have to praise the Friar’s Tunic and decry the Farrier’s Tackle or something.
If you ask a GBG ticker he (it WILL be a he, unless Blackpool Jane joins our club) will tell you there is NOTHING better in life than four tricky ticks in ten miles with someone else driving you. Just ask BRAPA.
From Midford, we took a windy road down towards bucolic Bradford-on-Avon, parking up perilously close to a flower bed in Winsley’s Seven Stars.
A flower bath, perhaps.
It looks gorgeous,
but once inside you’re pounced on by staff asking “Have you booked ?”. We NEVER book, especially for a half, and Mrs RM dashed past the sea of gentlefolk to nab the last table, inevitably set with knives and forks and wine glasses.
At the bar some frankly overworked staff dealing with complex food orders then had the trauma of a floppy Palmers pump, the top half collapsing pathetically on top of the lower (see also : Musselburgh Spoons). The bar”person” looked at me pleadingly, worried I might insist on urgent repairs. But I’m not usually that cruel.
And I felt guilty about bringing over a mere half of Pitchfork in terrible thin glass (an adequate 2.5) for Mrs RM in a packed dining pub, so we didn’t linger.
But you’ll all be delighted to know that Mrs RM had been eavesdropping on posh pensioner conversations about duff bets Grand National. “My horse was destroyed, DESTROYED !”. Old people are back enjoying pubs. And about time, too.
Great to see the gentlefolk coming out en-masse again. None of them seemed too distraught about the lack of Palmers.
retiredmartin 
Has anybody ever been that distraught at a lack of Palmers, floppy or otherwise?
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No.
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“None of them seemed too distraught about the lack of Palmers.”
An emotion that’s been current in the West Country for (checks glass) 225 years.
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Ooh, harsh.
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Maybe Palmers is only really for visitors like me who enjoyed many a pint of it staying with my family in Charmouth a few times about twenty years ago.
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I had quite a few over a few nights at the Who’d ‘A” Thought It? in Glastonbury several years ago.
It was OK if unremarkable stuff as I recall.
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I’m with you Paul. I thought Palmers 200 was a very good beer.
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Etui,
I’m of an age when a pint didn’t have to be “remarkable” to be good.
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Yes, it was a perfectly good session beer and served that purpose honourably enough.
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It’s momentous. Songs have been written about such things.
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Odd stuff that Palmers. On a par with Donnington.
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EP,
I’m not quite sure how to take “On a par with Donnington” but on the Palmers Tally Ho for the Quiz Night in Bridport’s Ropemaker’s with my wife and daughter was the highlight of our holiday that year, well for me it was.
And imagine my delight a few years ago on finding Tally Ho in the Hen and Chickens, one of my very favourite Birmingham pubs.
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