September 2024. Dronfield.
By the time this mini-series of posts concludes (with an 11% Imperial Stout) you’ll know more about Dronfield than anyone on Earth, and will cancel your next exotic holiday in Maidenhead to walk the drizzled streets wondering why Underdog wasn’t open.
A young man came to the door as I tried to barge my way in and cheerfully told me to pop back in 15 minutes. I decided at that moment that I wouldn’t.
But what would I do in Dronny ?
No more GBG pubs, no obvious pre-emptives from a cursory look on What Pub before the internet ran out, so I just headed aimlessly towards the parish church, staring into the window of the White Swan in a forlorn search for John Smiths Cask.
St John is an attractive church, but opening hours (again) prevented my scoring it for you,
and instead I opted to go in the first open pub I saw with a toddler having a tantrum outside.
The Green Dragon is a rambling, modernised, affair with the bonus of the toilets being where you least expect them, so at least you can have a conversation with a human that starts “It’s over there“.
It looks like a foody pub but the only grub seems to be occasional themed evenings, so enjoy your pint in front of the proper fire without the smell of katsu chicken and lasagne for a change. The only pollution is the sound of Taylor Swift’s latest album.
Beers you’ve heard of, Stafford Paul, and fairly local too, but as always in this situation take the Landlord test.
If a pub with modest cask trade can serve you a decent pint of Tim Taylor (under £4, too) they deserve your custom.
I was in a dazed state as my pint veered wildly between NBSS 3 and 3+.
“Well, well, look who it is !”.
I didn’t recognise pub ticking legend Wakefield Eddie without his Hi-Vis jacket used on official GBG missions.
CAMRA says assignations between pub tickers are prohibited in the 2 weeks before the official launch of a new GBG as they may lead to accidental embargo breaking, so we talked about Thurnscoe and football. Apparently Dronfield does have its own team. I suppressed my excitement.
“Time for a pint in the Blue Stoops ?”
“My thoughts exactly”
Lets hope the beer would be better than that half drunk bottle of Desperados left out in the rain.
Spoiler : It wasn’t.
retiredmartin 