April 2025. Wolverhampton.
Mainly due to it opening at 11:30, we started our Proper Pub Day Out in Wolves at The Stile.
Not always ideal to start at the best one, though the pub standard never really dropped, at least until one of our group moved on to Fireball whisky.
A very high standard of #PubMen on this trip,
in fact I thought of introducing a National Pub Man Scoring System (NPMSS) but all the folk today, from Worcester, Leicester, Stafford, Stockport and Sheffield were a 5.
CAMRA Discourse is currently having a tantrum about people in pub photos, so I’ve very carefully edited these pics from the Stile to get rid of humans.
Don’t be daft.
People make pubs, and in 2018 the Stile was a wonderful place to chat nonsense and admire the head on the Banks’s.
In 2025 Holden’s Mild has replaced the Banks’s version, and was apparently the star, but I stuck with the Bitter Amber brewed over West Park (at least till the end of the year).
Cool, crisp, immaculately presented (NBSS 3.5), a bit dull compared to Holden’s. That’s the only dull thing about the Stile, the King of Proper Pubs,
with a gem of a longstanding landlady who forced CAMRA discounts on us and didn’t mind us buying our own beers (“We love the ritual of getting our own beers, the little chat with you” I tried to explain).
If The Stile was my local I’d use it more than I use the Blind Monkey, and eat too much Polish food there, and the scales in the Gents would taunt me.
No, I didn’t step on them.
retiredmartin 
A fabulous pub and that Holden’s certainly was good.
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How do you decide when to buy on your own or to do rounds? Asking for a friend.
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Good question your friend asks. If I was with you and Joan I wouldn’t want to deprive you of the transaction at the bar so ideally we’d stay for two.
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That seems an excellent solution. I’ll tell him.
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Have people really got the hump over photos???? A good turn out of #pubmen
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There was a debate about exterior shots of pubs and whether you should have cars and people in view.
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Sounds like a debate in the grand tradition of pub going, ie. Talking a load of old s***e.
(The Real) Mark
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I was expecting your lavatory photograph to be of the poster to which a customer had realistically added “not after after eight pints in here” !
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This is a highly respected and cultured blog, Paul !
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