REMEMBERING HEREFORDSHIRE’S CLASSIC, BASIC AND UNSPOILT PUBS

The roads get slower and tighter as you leave the relative luxury of the A456 Ludlow-Bewdley road, the trail that converted us to the joys of perpetual travel 30 years ago.

My first Herefordshire pubs, when GBG ticking was yet to become an obsession, were possibly of RW Coe’s list of Classic, Basic and Unspoilt characterful houses (top), which would have stretched to Leominster’s Sun and Pontfaen, though I never did make the Halfway House, sadly. Too late now.

On reflection this period of “ticking the tat” must have been particularly stressful for Mrs RM, who I remember being horrified at the state of the Hop Pole in Risbury, but at least it built up our immunity in our 30s.

The Duke of York at Leysters seems familiar to those with an interest in Heritage pubs, run by the same family since 1911 but selling only keg beers, presumably to keep out the CAMRA GBG surveying coach parties.

Apart from Michael Slaughters pics, there’s barely a trace of the Duke on the web, bar this You Tube video I copy for your “pleasure”.

Our next stop, also in Docklow parish isn’t a classic pub, but it is a good example of a Herefordshire roadside pub.

Not as essential as the (currently closed) Live & Let Live at Bringsty Common just up the A44, but the Kings Head is a solid (in every sense) all day dining pub with ubiquitous beer range (HPA NBSS 3),

though it’s a dining pub without diners, and the best culinary options are Beer Pig scratchings and takeaway eggs.

I like its friendliness and lack of pretension, and soundtrack clinging to the ’80s.

though the saucy postcards will no doubt dismay the CAMRA Bureau of Inquisition set up to investigate offensive items.

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.

11 thoughts on “REMEMBERING HEREFORDSHIRE’S CLASSIC, BASIC AND UNSPOILT PUBS”

  1. Dragged a pregnant wife in the Three Tuns in Hay on Wye 20 years ago – not impressed. Visited the unspoilt Cornewall Arms in Clodock a few weeks back and it was cracking – just local bottles of beer/cider so will never be GBG but a great experience

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  2. Not that your the looking back type, but you ever think about a retrospective series on “when GBG ticking was yet to become an obsession.” Early pubbing in essence. Why the light bulb turned on.

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    1. Fantastic idea, though I’d rather read Simon’s story. There was clearly a period, perhaps before the first spreadsheet c. 2001, when it was just using the Guide as a guide to good pubs rather than a mission in itself.

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      1. I vividly remember my two light bulb moments. One, a rainy night in York with the wind really gusting. We happened in the Royal Oak, prior to the refurb, and had a pint by the fire. An old man with a dog sat quietly drinking in the same room. The ambiance completely hooked me. Second, I happened to buy a used copy of the GBG on the street at a used book store. Early 2000s. Never looked back.

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      2. Lovely memories, Dave.

        My own first GBG (1994, the red cover) opened up an exciting world I’d never explored with places in Northumberland I’d never heard of. Much more interesting than drinking beers at beer festivals.

        I suspect that my first foray into the Black Country, Banks’s and Batham and all, with their Old Boys and banter, felt a lot different to the rather quieter and more polite pubs of Cambridge and made me want to go in a lot more each week.

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      3. Dave, Firstly, “The ambiance completely hooked me” reminds me of late evening in the New Beehive, one other customer and the gaslighting giving an ambiance probably also known in Humphrey’s Beverley pub. Secondly, you were lucky as for fifty years GBGs have been known to be absent from British second hand book shops as they’ve either fallen apart from over use or are kept forever – or the pink highlighting makes them unsaleable.

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      4. Martin, My own first GBG (1974, the black and white cover) didn’t quite open up an exciting world for me as I was already using Frank Baillie’s ‘The Beer Drinker’s Companion’. But maybe the proper excitement was before those books were published, going to an unfamiliar area with no idea whatsoever of what unheard of beer might be found. The youth of today are sadly missing out on all that.

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