retiredmartin

September 2023. Great Gonerby.

I know many of you were very excited by my recent series on “Pubs Close To The Southern Grantham Relief Road“, and here to thrill you today is the excitingly named Recruiting Sergeant in Great Gonerby, north Grantham, which I’m fairly sure none of you have heard of before.

How had I heard of it ? You’ll have to wait till the 28th to find out. Probably we discovered it by accident while stopping off at the Downtown Designer Outlet, a higgledy-piggledy clothes store especially designed to make it impossible to find that pair of trousers in your father’s size.

Great Gonerby will delight Americans with its lovely church,

and pandemic-inspired centrepiece.

“What’s that bloke doing ?” you ask.

Lobbing bricks at the church, obviously.

Britain has a long history of attacks on Christianity, see also the Skeleton Army, but this is possibly the only actual statue commemorating them.

The village pub is the only Recruiting Sergeant in the UK, too.

We were expecting something upmarket, forgetting this is Grantham. And that it’s an Everards pub.

Everards deserve more respect for keeping a decent balance between the lounge/restaurant and the public, and it feels homely and lively with Wolves v the Scouse on the telly.

But enough cask trade for three pumps ?

Possibly not, even the toddler in a Forest home shirt is on Madri.

Stick to Tiger and you’re OK, there were three pulled in a minute. I handed Mrs RM her pint while DES here waited for his lime and soda, prompting the cheery landlady to wonder where the Tiger had gone. I pointed to Mrs RM, her glass half-drained.

“Not that brilliant” said Mrs RM, a bit harsh I thought, though my initial assessment of NBSS 3+ had drifted a bit by the time the first blast of nostalgia had faded.

A very Grantham soundtrack, and at £4.30 for a pint and a soda roughly half the price of that Mapledurham pub last week.

Classic Bike magazines in the rack, quaint illustrations (rather than soft porn) in the Gents.

A very decent allrounder, though obviously it’ll never make the GBG and force BRAPA to take a half hour walk out from Grantham station.