July 2025. Newport Pagnell.
Among the main annoyances for GBG tickers (and I’m an amateur ticker these days) are pubs you can’t find, brewery taps open Friday and Saturday only, and places which shut on a Friday night in August for a staff outing but don’t update Facebook.
There’s also the pub you walk past one year after your actual Guide (just kicked out for the crime of misleading dispense) entry, go “Hmm“, but don’t go in and then find it in the next GBG.
Such is the Frog & Nightgown in Newport Pagnell,
actually tucked away, Lady of Mann style, in the courtyard of my Thursday night hotel, which has the most convoluted route from reception to room (five doors) since that Spoons in Bewdley.
Literally, the Frog is the locals bar for the Swan (Revived).
Quite an Old Skool travellers hotel, and in theory if they stuck a barrel of Phipps on the residents bar they could get a separate Guide entry. But they won’t.
Not every pub is a cauldron of excitement, and until 9pm the Frog & Nightgown (named for an unfortunate incident at the motorway services in 1967) is a model of gentlefolk gentility.
Knowle Spring (why) or London Pride, the Tim Taylor a decent NBSS 3+.
But then, as I retire to my room at 9pm for rest before an arduous day’s pubbing ahead, it starts.
“Riiiggght. First question…”
The quiz is taking place in the courtyard below my first floor window and I hear every “Oooh…that bloke“, “Dunno” and “Michelle Pfeiffer ?” over the next two hours.
Booking.com need to advise on quiz night dates when you choose a hotel.
retiredmartin 