April 2025. Wolverhampton.
If you’re getting the impression our intrepid cask warriors were having a good time last Thursday you’d be right,
I nearly sat out our 5th/6th pub, the Wheatsheaf having been a bit too “earthy” even for your lover of earthy pubs last time out.
A drinkers pub, we’ll call it.
But the Wheatsheaf is practically the last Banks’s cask pub in town, the local CAMRA branch (sensibly avoiding us during the day) heading there for their meeting to discuss whatever CAMRA discusses later
And it was great, in every respect, the unexpected highlight of the day.
Of course, a 60 year old bloke will always like a pub where the landlady says “Thank you my angel” as you buy a pint of Amber,
and there were a few T-shirts on display that might not have passed the first hurdle of the woke bar, but the sheet joy in this place is on display in the inevitable “pub men on 5th pint” photo.
Another 3.5 for the Banks’s, though I doubt we’ll miss it as much as we’ll miss, say, John Smiths cask, and another triumph for pub crawl compiler Will.
But Will’s ace card was still to come…
retiredmartin 
Strange how what was once the lounge side of this pub has been entirely closed off, reducing it to the former public bar. I remember going in here many years ago when both sides were heaving.
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Always nice when bar staff toys with our delusion that we haven’t fallen as far as we have fallen.
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And they do it so convincingly, Dave !
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I went for the Brakspears, which was in very good condition (NBSS 4) and also a better beer than I remember it from before the brewery closed and it’s production moved elsewhere.
Thank you for your kind praise of “my” curated pub visit, or whatever you’ve been calling it, but it was Young Mr Mudge who produced the list of pubs, and I just put it out there on Discourse and did the maps and approximate timings. I was as pleasantly surprised by the quality of the pubs and beers as anyone
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It takes a special sort of bravery to engage with Discourse, Will. Take the praise.
As usual, Paul knows best.
Really glad you enjoyed the pubs.
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Stayed there for a weekend visit over thirty years ago. We kept on drinking in the pub until about one in the morning and then the landlord insisted on us taking a couple of pints each up to the room. The beer was certainly very good then, certainly as good as any in the town centre, although I did revisit much later and it wasn’t up to the same standard.
[IPW]
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Sounds quite a night !
Yes, I wasn’t much impressed last time out but it impressed me last week
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My friends and I used to stay there in the 1990s. The rooms were basic but clean. The Banks’s Mild was always tip-top. The “dawn chorus” started about 5AM – the buses revving up outside!
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Not many hotels in Wolverhampton, despite the commercial and football travel !
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