February 2025. Mansfield.
What a great day walking round Mansfield’s suburbs in bitter cold.
No, honestly, it’s exactly what I needed after months cooped up in Waterbeach. Gets the mind thinking, thinking, as much as the legs exercised.
Mansfield can’t compete with (say) Halifax. more like a Grimsby, row after row of solid suburbia punctuated by the occasional strip of green.
My target (E on the map) is a first Beer Guide newbie of the day, the alluringly named Stella Taps, which joins KEG Craft Beer Tasting Rooms in Bourne End at the head of unlikely GBG entries.
I was tempted to bring you a video clip from the acclaimed BBC comedy,
but I don’t dislike my readers that much.
It seems only a couple of years ago that micro pubs were always unexpectedly shut, but nowadays you rarely get opening hours heartache, and the Stella has an OPEN sign on the street corner a full 20 minutes before the expected 4pm.
“We open early for regulars” says the barman. I am very regular.
You want to know what the Taps look like, but I expect you have a pretty good idea already.
Long thin room with bar on the right, cushions, ’80s soundtrack,
shots menu and Dead Man’s Fingers rum,
high tables and a screen showing a roaring fire. It’s what Pub Men call “the West Lancs micro model“.
Three blokes discuss Maseratis,
an Old Boy comes in and exclaims “Oooh, fresh barrel of Deception on ?“. The 2025 suburban micro is not a hotbed of craft.
You don’t come from Sheffield to Notts to drink South Yorkshire ale, so I have a cool, fruity, frothy, pint of Nottingham Cock & Hoop (NBSS 3.5+) which maintains Mansfield’s cask reputation but it’s not a pub that BRAPA will warm to.
Even with that fire blazing away on the big screen.
retiredmartin 
Simon not like Maseratis?
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No he’s more a Cosworth lad.
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He’s a typical whale tail man.
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I think the first video fire I saw was in Burton upon Trent, in a pub called The Crossing. It was in the disused fireplace, which is a little unimaginative. I like the way your photo shows the fire hanging incongruously in the front window!
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The Crossing was the Blue Posts, the pub I first had Bass in.
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