July 2024. Wooler.
Terrifyingly close to that Scottish border, as we reach our destination at Wooler. I almost suggested a trip across to Coldstream when it seemed our hotel only served quiche, but the pub there only offered real ale in summer, and we’d already had summer last Thursday.
The Black Bull seems to be the foremost residential hotel in Wooler, a farming town of 1,983 on the way to nowhere I’d only stopped in briefly (during Covid) for breakfast.
1,983 ! There’s more folk than that in Landbeach, and that has zero pubs. Wooler has five (5), and a 6th was converted into the Co-op a decade ago so it’s worth ticking that by buying your pain au raisins there, as I did the next morning.
The GBG Black Bull offers rooms for half the price of the GBG Tankerville, rooms with a four poster and spa bath (honest), and a reminder of the Federation brewery from 30 years ago.
It’s lovingly “unreconstructed”, I guess, and the front room looked gorgeous in the morning.
The previous night, it had looked raucous, the noisiest pub of the year so far.
Which is great to see, all of Wooler’s society out in the pubs on a Friday, but hardly conducive to the genteel dining atmosphere Mrs RM and I expect.
I stopped for a pint, a cool Hadrian Border Blonde (3+), but nearly went in search of somewhere quieter for tea before Mrs RM declared she wasn’t moving.
That would have been a big mistake, huge, as the £10 steak pie turned out to be astonishingly good.
But the big question remains...
Who or what are the twerlies of which Graham speaks on Pubs Galore ?
retiredmartin 
We were Twerlies when we tried to board a bus at 9.20 in Torquay & use our oaps passes. I think I actually said – oh dear we are twerlie as I stumped up the fare. Pauline
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Quality, Pauline.
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The Hadrian Border Blonde was drinking well in the Free Trade all three evenings I stayed in Berwick last March. I had the first and the last pint from a cask.
Five minutes early Jane. With three dozen oldies waiting for the 9.30am 555 bus from Keswick earlier this month it was 9.25am when the ticket machine started accepting our passes.
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“I had the first and the last pint from a cask.”
and the ones in the middle ?
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I had the first and the last pint from a cask and one of the seventy or so in between.
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Get on the A19 as soon as you can with that drive. I’m sure I’ve said this before!
On the Tees flyover you can give me a wave and that banked Bass
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I can see why the twerlies were there. Wish I’d stayed for the steak pie now. (Graham)
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“raucous” like the Beacon Hotel on a Saturday night?
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Andy,
It was rammed at 6pm last Saturday, quieter by 8pm, never “raucous”.
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