August 2024. Worksop.
The tri-weekly trips between Sheffield and Waterbeach aren’t too bad these days, just dull.
Apart from the decision on where to stop for coffee (Markham Moor McDonalds or North Muskham Greggs) the main excitement is guessing whether it’s M18 or A57.
The latter takes you into the little known Dukeries, home to the 1957 Ryder Cup at Lindrick, Mr Straw’s House (micropub hours), the atmospheric Creswell Crags, Sheffield’s only Welsh pub,
and a village that acquired the name Rhodesia for 5 guineas in 1980 after Zimbabwe found it had no further use for it.
There is no worse feeling in the world than that sense that you don’t know a place, and if someone asked you “What’s Northern Worksop like then, RM ?” you’d have to lie. One should never lie/
So with Mrs RM parked up in the giant Sainsbury (A) just off the A57,
I set off along the canal towpath to the Woodhouse (B).
In truth (and one should never lie) I’d have gone in Marston’s Lock Keeper but the Pedi was off, and the “never troubling the Beer Guide” Woodhouse is a pub I’ve passed a thousand times but never seen.
Blimey, it’s gorgeous. Look at that font !
An unfussy family pub for the 1,200 villagers over the Chesterfield canal; perhaps exemplifying a lot of North Notts.
Three rooms, pub games, giant garden,
one hand pump.
Which is plenty.
The young barmaid pulls through a whole pint so I get a cool beer, and my scepticism is misplaced as this is cool and chewy (3.5+).
I rush to score it and let local CAMRA know of my find, confident that nothing I say will help it dislodge the Mallard and the Spoons, but Worksop could do with a 3rd Guide entry.
Perhaps not smart enough for Mrs RM, but that bench seating suits me,
even if the soundtrack is pure Notts Dad Rock.
I leave you with the beer fact of the day,
confident you’ve never, ever heard that one before…
retiredmartin 
Coincidentally, I’m due to walk with friends from Kiveton Park station to Worksop next Tuesday, past that very pub. I’ve had the beer before, in a single hand pump pub in Worksop, and it’s a pretty decent pint.
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20 years ago there were a good few decent Worksop one or two cask pub in or around the Beer Guide (Shireoaks, Greendale Oak, Unicorn), but most went keg and that cheap and cheerful Grafton homebrew place didn’t last. Looks like it’s lost half its pubs in a decade.
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The Shireoaks was still ok when I had that Welbeck Abbey beer 11 months ago. Good beer isn’t only available in GBG pubs, as you know very well.
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Indeed, as we saw in Stafford and Wem recently. But GBG places seem to chase the microbrews these days. That Dukeries (?) brewery tap/rock bar in Worksop didn’t last long in the Guide.
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I only know Worksop with going to and from Edwinstowe in July 1998 and remember a high proportion of the townsfolk being smokers.
I had Stones in the Kings Head, French Horn and Greendale Oak, Mansfield in the Tap House and Castle Rock and Mauldons in the Mallard.
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