RETURN TRAY WONDERS IN WAKEFIELD !

October 2023. Crigglestone. Wakefield.

We arrived back at Luton Airport to collect our vehicle the day before THIS;

Glad we were only away for a week.

It took a few days of parent-visiting before I could get back into the swing of visiting weirdly names Yorkshire villages.

In fact, I’d never heard of Crigglestone, whose Wiki entry is a bit light for an old mining village of 9,271 souls. It once had two (2) railway stations; now you need a bus from Wakefield and you know my views on buses.

You also know my views on autovacs, which What Pub lumbers with the far less prosaic name of “Return tray”.

Is this to deter, or entice the reader ?

They should really focus more on the play area, a gem.

Anyhow, not only do you get beer as nature intended at The Station, but all day opening from 10am,

you also get a Tetley lamp,

and a choice of one (1) beer.

I couldn’t have been happier (well, unless that one beer was Bass, obvs).

And that Farmer’s Blonde got better and better, cool and rich (NBSS 3.5). Did the return tray (if there was one, I certainly didn’t peer over the bar) make any difference ? Who cares ?

It really enjoyed its little table by the window, watching the cricket world cup (note to US readers – it’s a grown-up version of baseball). I read the local CAMRA magazine I’ve always liked because folk write about ordinary pubs where they drink autovac beer under Ā£4 and eat pie and chips.

Suddenly, everything was gonna be alright.

But would I be the only customer ? There did seem a lot of staff busying themselves in a station pub without a station.

But on the stroke of 12 cars started parking up, gentlefolk hugged each other, and ladies asked what the specials were (a late 70s/early 80s Coventry band).

I left the diners to dine, and took this photo so you could identify the plant for me.

Published by retiredmartin

Retired NHS, doing long walks around UK and the world to record the great bits. Focused on Good Beer Guide pubs and live music.

15 thoughts on “RETURN TRAY WONDERS IN WAKEFIELD !”

  2. It might be mullein, Verbascum bombyciferum.
    There’s one at the top of our back garden, actually the bottom of the neighbour’s back garden but they’ve installed a fence well short of the dividing wall giving us the foot wide strip where it grows, not that any of you wanted to know that.

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  4. I find that the quality of the lacings can be the most reliable indication of whether or not a pint has been in a return tray and through an Autovac.
    But someone residing on another continent has argued on Discourse that it’s about whether or not you get the shits the next day.
    We need a proper debate on the subject in Dundee next April.

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      1. Ah, but first I’d have to decide whether I’m for or against them.
        Then I’d have to find a seconder.

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  5. I enjoy reading the local Camra mags too -my favourite articles are the days out,especially when several bus journeys are involved -very often they only seem to manage 4 pints or so -hardly in BRAPAs league !

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  6. Who cares?

    Well, anyone who would prefer that no one had sneezed, dribbled, washed their hands, or done anything else unspeakable in the beer they’ve been served I suppose.

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      2. Ah, so it’s tramasalata or tsatsiki but not both then Paul?

        Seems a bit parsimonious when you’ve paid all that.

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  7. From the international cricket council site: “There is a consensus of expert opinion that cricket may have been invented during Saxon or Norman times by children living in the Weald, an area of dense woodlands and clearings in south-east England. The first reference to cricket being played as an adult sport was in 1611, and in the same year, a dictionary defined cricket as a boys’ game.” Clearly defined as a boys game. Baseball is for adults by all accounts.

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