May 2024. Warwick.
A bit of moderation, moving on to halves on pub 3,
then a slight relapse as I realise you’ll expect me to do the craft bar.
No, you probably will.
It gives me a chance to make a full circuit of a town that looks more interesting on paper than reality,
though the Lord Leycester looks even better a second time round.
Every medium sized town must have a craft bar in 2024, and I shall be the arbiter of how convincing a craft bar it is.
Craftsman is a naff name (deduct 1 point), but they’re playing early 2000s techno (add 1.5 points).
Stay long enough and get George Benson and Chic.
It’s got one of those electronic scoreboards linked to Untappd, but then everyone has, so nothing added or gained there.
And on that board we find…
…Verdant Lightbulb (minus 1) and eight (8) from Beartown, who I didn’t even know did keg.
I have a Schrodinger’s Bear, tastes a bit like Verdant or Deya, but quirky enough (add 1).
The star of the line-up is the unisex loo. Blackpool Jane will aperove, and not just of the flamingo (or is it a pelican ?). Add 2.
Seating is functional, par for the course, and there’s a modern pub food menu that entices in the mums and toddlers after school, which I like a lot. The young barman in incredibly friendly.
“Here’s to girl power !” toasts the lead mum. She’s not drinking the craft.
It won’t be on Stafford Paul’s Proper Pub crawl, that’s for sure, but it might be on mine again.
retiredmartin 
I’ve already got my schedule planned for my trip to Warwick the day after tomorrow. I even did a trip plan on that new CAMRA Experience, and called it “Warwick in Retired Martin’s footsteps”.
Strangely, I didn’t include the Craftsman in the route, and it’s too late to change it now. Besides, I had a hazy pale yesterday (in Alfred in Meanwood before the Rhinos beat the Tigers at Headingley), so I’m all done with craft for the next 30 days.
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“It won’t be on Stafford Paul’s Proper Pub crawl, that’s for sure“. Yes indeed, not that I’ve got Warwick in my diary, nor anything in my diary this month except Nottingham next Saturday lunchtime – any excuse for a pint of Bass in the Vaults before the last 841 bus leaves for Stafford. I found plenty of Bass and Pedigree last Saturday in Newcastle, a day that started well with a 10am £2.90 Abbot drinking very well in Craft Union’s Golden Lion and from the 1980s music playing I’ve learnt all these years later that the Eurythmics song I’ve known as ‘Caught in a Trap’ is actually ‘Thorn in my Side’. I got to Warwick a few times about fifty years ago, with a rare Davenports pub back then, and was last there for a regional meeting in July 2018.
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Hi Martin – pleased I’m not the only one with a minor obsession for getting pictures of the Lord Leycester Hospital! They host occasional beer festivals in there which Nick a.k.a. the Bus Pass Bandit is a fan of. Incidentally, I haven’t seen Nick cropping up on any of your Warwick postings but if you saw anyone bearing a passing resemblance to King Charles it might have been him. Only done the Craftsman once myself – last year not long after it first started operating – and found it ticked a lot of the craft beer boxes without being earth-shattering. Ronnie’s Bar was probably more memorable but I did enjoy the Tonkoko Milk Stout. Cheers, Paul
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