TASTES LIKE SHERBERT. SEMER WATER AT THE BAY HORSE, RAVENSWORTH

July 2025. Ravensworth. North Yorkshire.

“Do you have a booking ?”.

Ah, the North-Yorkshire-not-quite-touristy gastropub run by enthusiastic young couple in a village with castle ruins.

“Um, just a drink please”.

“Super, great idea, we have a loverly garden out back”.

Yes, they definitely want the indoors for the diners at the Bay Horse,

with its ambitious starters menu and “Grilled Doreens”.

I don’t mind that; be clear what you are.

But if you’re in the GBG, serve me a cool, crisp pint.

And they do. A classic pint of what BRAPA calls semen water, what a wag.

It’s a good, sherberty, pint, in a lovely English garden with a manic cushion overload, in the company of what feels like a scene from “Peter’s Friends“.

I’ve never actually watched “Peter’s Friends”, but I know what I mean. And so do you.

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Published by retiredmartin

Retired NHS, doing long walks around UK and the world to record the great bits. Focused on Good Beer Guide pubs and live music.

10 thoughts on “TASTES LIKE SHERBERT. SEMER WATER AT THE BAY HORSE, RAVENSWORTH”

  1. Morning RM
    Just brought myself up to date under your deluge of recent posts. Excellent reading as ever.
    I noticed in a couple of them you have a pop at community pub owners. It is done with your usual bon homie but maybe they deserve some of your love and understanding too? I am sure you recognise ‘the type’ as a key pillar to the strategy to save the pub…?
    There are two crackers near me – Packhorse in South Stoke and Hop Poles Inn in Limpley Stoke – that would have been lost to developers if it wasn’t for the community rallying around.
    And yes, we know when a community owner is in the place but I reflect it is a small price to pay for the cool and chewy gem before me.
    Dom in Bath
    *For the avoidance of doubt, I am not a community owner myself

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    1. Morning Dom

      Thanks for such a good defence of community pubs and they certainly do deserve love and understanding.

      A successful, well-used pub is a wonderful thing, even if it’s not a pub I warm to myself (same applies to Spoons, Brunning & Price and others).

      I’m able to recognise how good community pubs are without actually liking them !

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  2. Thanks RM
    Next time you are in Bath I invite you to the Hop Poles for a Cheddar Gorge Best and I will try and change your mind..!
    Let me ask you a philosophical question: your favourite local is due for sale and the developers are circling. Your neighbours tell you they are banding together to buy it and continue to run it as a pub. They ask you to join their campaign, perhaps even be the face of it given your expertise and profile.
    Do you get involved and keep quiet about your in principle dislike of the type, or do you say ‘no thanks, not my kind of pub’. Do you subordinate your individual principle to the common good?
    Long Live the Local!
    DiB

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    1. Oh, get involved.

      Dislike and preference are different things.

      But I’d be lying in what is essentially my diary if I didn’t comment on the things that I notice in pubs, which are rarely about the beer !

      Yesterday in Atherstone I had a great time in the Hat & Beaver, one of the most basic pubs imaginable, and one no “community” would ever invent if it didn’t exist.

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