retiredmartin

September 2024. Sheffield.

Back at Sheffield Station from Dronfield I’m faced with a half hour slog up the hill back to the Blind Monkey home, and do that daft thing you often do at the end of a Proper Pub crawl;

have a nightcap at the station bar. (see also : Parcel Yard, Old Ticket Office).

Surrounded by some of the best pubs in the world, you’d be surprised how infrequently I nip in the Rutland Arms, the Fat Cat, the Sheffield Tap. It’s the call of The New; I’ll always prefer a New one-pump pub estate pub in Rotherham to an Old classic,

but the Studentz are back in town this weekend and us Old Boyz need to get our beers in while there’s space at the bar.

All those great homebrew beers called “Deborah” and “Jericho”, so what do I choose ?

Oh, why not cider ? Apart from never mixing beer and cider, I guess.

Well, it was gorgeous, and I felt fine in the morning, though that might have been the restorative effects of the Crispy Beef and Singapore Rice.

I headed to the frankly gorgeous old dining room where the brewery sits,

ideal for watching overcrowded trains getting progressively later as folk fail to let departing passengers off first.

It’s a marvellous pub; one of those placed you can genuinely go with mates or alone, join in or hide.

Almost as good was the takeaway from Wok this Way at the top of Walkley (NCTSS 4), though it’ll never replace you-know-what in my affections.