retiredmartin

May 2023.

Another day, another small pub (NOT a micro) in a Midlands market town.

Keen readers will remember Shifnal as the venue for one of the last Proper Days Out before Covid.

Half a dozen Old Codgers tip up at a remote train station with 27 different train tickets and visit half a dozen too many pubs, most of them unlikely to grace the Good Beer Guide because they don’t offer CAMRA discount guest beers.

Shifnal in late 2019 was one of our favourite trips, though the bee-coloured Jaspers perhaps wasn’t the highlight.

Clearly GBG23 newbie the King’s Yard was waiting for use to leave town before it opened; I think we’d have enjoyed it if it had beaten the Covid cut.

Coming from the station turn right (north) at the clock,

and look between the Shifnal Fryer and the betting shop. That’s the position that the new small bars occupy on the High Street these days.

Definitely a small pub. Decent bench seating,

weird memorabilia on the walls,

the world’s largest charity box,

and another of those beer ranges that pay scant regard to all those new breweries opened this millennium.

Which is fine. Once again, Wye Valley is the beer of choice, a cool, foamy Butty Bach (NBSS 3) perhaps not the greatest beer in the Salopian chapter I’d just completed but good enough.

The soundtrack for this landmark pint was, of course, Bjork.

https://youtu.be/BjxVeyhjp1U

Oh so quiet, perhaps. Ironically, our 2019 crawl culturally curated tasting was best remembered for the volume at which Pink blasted out in the Crown, something Pub Curmudgeon still uses as an exemplar of inappropriate music volume.

Speaking of the Crown, that bloke in the corner of the King’s Yard suddenly looked very familiar.

Ah, yes, here he is, four years ago.

What a pub hero. Wonder when he switched allegiance from Pink to Bjork ?