retiredmartin

Like Northants and Essex, a solid pub county, with perhaps higher expectations on the county town than it can actually deliver these days,

I’ll be honest, I’ve picked five from places that you wouldn’t necessarily visit on your tour of the UK; mining villages, suburbs nicknamed Stab by locals, and remote villages impossible to access on public transport.

We’ll start in one of the best modern beer bars I’ve been to in recent years.

Nottingham – Partizan

If you come to Nottingham you must visit the Art Gallery and the Olde Trip to Jerusalem, and then meander via the market square out to Sneinton Market, where this Partizan Belgrade themed pub has a chatty landlord keen to talk Serbia,

and the beers of the year from Northern Alchemy and Lenton Lane.

OK, it hasn’t got caves for cellars or a canal boat in the middle of the pub, but sometimes you have to reward quality.

CAMRA have rewarded quality at our next pub over many years,

Stapleford – Horse & Jockey

but there’s a bit of sentimentality about this pick. It was the late, great, Alan Winfield‘s local, but the Horse & Jockey is also one of the great backstreet ale houses, the Wellington (Brum or Sheff) of the East Midlands.

Will approved, too.

In truth it looks a bit modernised in the Google photos, so I really ought to revisit what I remember as a cheery, boisterous boozer with high quality cask, but unlike Alan I won’t be doing 23 pubs in a day.

Visiting Notts demands a visit to a central and suburban pub, and one of the many, many, newish micros in mysterious Broxtowe district.

I’ve picked the one with a Happy Hour. In the birthplace of DH Lawrence. This is his statue, I think.

Eastwood – Gamekeepers

“It’s a small pub, rather than a high table. So you get babes in arms, pint drinking mums (hoorah !), lager AND Cloudwater cans, and proper seating.

You also get, as Old Boy at Bar delightedly told me, HAPPY HOUR from 3-4 ! (It wasn’t actually 3pm yet, but we’ll overlook that technicality).

So my pint of Lenton 36 Degrees North costs £2.50, saving me the 50p that CAMRA folk demand as of right.

“Reminds me of Mansfield Bitter” I remarked, after Old Boy had given me the beer name.

Old Boy then provided an astonishingly detailed analysis of the merits of Mansfield from his career as a drayman. Genuinely riveting stuff, of which I understood not a jot. Stafford Paul would have been in his element.“

I miss Mansfield beers, and the pub signage adorning their basic boozers, but the revival of Bass in a fair few village pubs this last decade has been some compensation

Rempstone – White Lion

And the scattered communities below the Nottingham power stations are a good place to get an idea of rural Notts,

and eavesdrop on the mundanities of village life over an inevitably good pint.

“The barmaid ushers me (it’s Covid times) to a corner seat next to the Old Boy, away from the younger residents, who are engaged in administrative business over their Carlings, possibly the Rempstone Steam and Country Show.“

“Would you mind seconding that ?”

“Old Dave Roberts will know“

“You have no authority here !“

“He needs a PSA blood test“. etc etc

Great but incomprehensible stuff. And the Bass was cool, crisp and leaves distinctive lacings (NBSS 3.5).

It’s not a remarkable pub, but travelling past it on the way home from Eye Kettleby last month I felt an oddly sentimental twang toward the White Lion.

And finally from me, the Plum Porter is an old mining town village traditionally dominated by social clubs called “The Venue” and “Club”.

Rainworth – The Inkpot

Look, it’s in a village that make Mansfield seem sexy, and its’s a bit functional, I guess.

“Half a dozen middle-aged folk (OK, probably younger than me) were debating Marjorie Proops and turning lobster red in the sun; who needs Lanzarote ?“

“OK, OK, it’s functional, but there are many, many functional new pubs in GBG21, and few of them will have pints of Plum Porter as wonderful as this (NBSS 4) for £3.“

25 degrees that day in outer Mansfield, and the banter and the beer were sizzling. When I contemplate why I did the GBG, it’s because of pubs like the Inkpot, not the Olde Trip.

Over to you for Number 6. Nominations from Newark warmly welcomed.

EDIT : Axholme Rob noted my failure to include anything from the north-west of the county, so as a bonus here’s one of the closest pubs to Sundown Adventure Land, as good a reason as any to visit;

Laneham – The Bees Knees

No longer a Tap for Springhead, but I reckon the almost literal pub sign (on the wall) warrants its inclusion in a Top 6.

A cheery, slightly upmarket beer bar, the sort of place you get in the foothills of That Sheffield.

“And after some confusion, with me asking for a Springhead beer in genuine ignorance, I enjoyed a frankly glorious half of Cat Asylum (NBSS 4). Cool, rich, fruity, cheap. And standing room only at 4pm on a Sunday.“

There you go, Rob, hope that redresses the North-South imbalance.

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