retiredmartin

5th February 2023.

A tip for all you pub bloggers out there. Let your posting slip for just a moment and you’ll be a week behind again. Three posts daily does it.

Another top tip is “Don’t worry about there being more than a thousand pubs in your Top 100 pubs“. No-one can prove you haven’t kicked 900 of them off the list.

Back to Sheffield, where a spritely Jim B and I were navigating the industrial back streets from Abbeydale Road to the antiques centre Heeley, home to three longstanding Guide entries.

I’d walked to the Sheaf View and Brothers Arms last month and found them as good, if not better, than 20 years ago.

Why had I left the White Lion so long for a return ?

Surely those windows alone are reason enough to visit ?

I guess that’s the reason. There’s that sense of permanence about the White Lion. It’ll always be there; there’ll always be next week.

At the bar, Jim surprised me by going straight for the pint of Plum Porter; most professional tickers stick to the halves on the road to GBG completion. But who drinks halves of Plum ?

It’s (another) multi-roomed gem, reminiscent of Hanley’s Coachmakers Arms, and we picked the classic front bar which mirrors that Stoke stunner.

Blimey, what a cracking pint of Plum this was. Cool, crisp, full-bodied (NBSS 4). All that was lacking was a full pub on a Sunday afternoon. Where was everybody ?

Are the beers too mainstream now, we wondered.

The chap sitting at the bar asked where we were heading next, we got chatting, transpired this was the landlord.

And he was leaving the pub soon, usual reasons, and I was glad at least I could tell him he was leaving on a high, serving some of the best beer I’ve had in ages. Should have had the Tets.

Good luck to him.

As with the Coachmakers, take nothing and no-one for granted. And don’t put off that visit.