retiredmartin

April 2025. Burbage.

While I’d been leading Stafford Paul on a curated tour of church doors, horsepools and wildflowers, our fellow toppers Quinno and Leon were on a meandering route to meet up at the Red Lion.

A solid place to start,

though perhaps not a cask line up to impress folk who believe all beer should be produced by an “independent” artisan with no care for, or hope of, profit (ugh).

But for normal pubgoers, a line up with at least one beer you’ve heard of,

though with the newly anointed custodian of the Bass Spreadsheet (“Custodia Bassius”) in tow there was only one choice.

Look how excited he is.

I was wearing my Bass Bath Star shirt, which unlike Quinno’s effort wasn’t  (allegedly) a promotional bribe from a nasty national (boo). I’m sure Manchester City had an away shirt like that 40 years ago.

“Four pints of Bass please“.

The landlady, a Proper Pub type, was less surprised with that request than by my paying in cash.

This was a cool, rich, joy of a pint, even first out of the pumps. As pub crawl curator I get the second pint.

Tears for Fears follow Whitesnake, it’s a pub worthy of the description “Locals pub, excellent hand pulled beer” in the 1979 Leicestershire pub guide.

Beyond that, and my NBSS 3.5 scores, I remember nothing about it at all.