October 2025. St Albans.
One of my favourite campervan stops is St Albans, about £7 overnight on a Sunday with no diggers (not that I’d recognise a digger if one licked me) and a quick train into St Pancras.
After a quiet decade there’s also the occasional new GBG entry, and I arranged to meet local Pub legend Coxy in the Beehive.
I say “arranged”. I’d given him a full 10 minutes notice and he’d still arrived 5 minutes before me with a half drunk pint in a pub full of Liverpool and United fans.
It’s a cosy little local in that warren of pubs between Abbey and station, with a decent City Gold from Golden Triangle, but not quite good enough for “cancel plans and stay for a second“.
I hadn’t met Coxy since the famous “Prost, Pub Tickers and no Dacorum” trip of 2017, and he proved a fount of knowledge on the Snorbans and London pub scene.
“That one used to have a brewery,
this one had a 17% impy stout on last week…
oh, you don’t drink craft, do you ?”.
I don’t know how he got that impression. I guess it’s the Annual Doom Bar Day I organise (1/4). I’ll drink anything, and reckon they might as well put offie/bars like the Beer Shop in the GBG.
To be honest, some of the GBG craft bars with a token handpump would be better off ditching it and putting on cask mead.
Coxy’s dismay that the strong one has sold out was palpable, but we survived on Azvex.
Shutting at 6pm, as all St Albans folk have to be up at 6 in the morning to catch the train to Bank, so on to the Robin Hood,
where Coxy was desperate I have the Harveys.
But that had gone, too.
So I had the Lees (NBSS 3.5).
And, after being a bit disappointed last time, the Robin Hood shone tonight.
Next time I’ll give Coxy 15 minutes notice and he can show me where they hide the Bass.
retiredmartin 
Love those pictures of pubs looking all warm and cosy on a dank Autumn day.
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They were certainly that !
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“in that warren of pubs between Abbey and station” and about midway between Abbey and City stations.
“the Harveys. But that had gone” but the Robin Hood is Miles’s most northerly regular outlet by far and so the nearest Harveys for tens of millions of us residing north of Watford Gap.
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Correct Paul but I do remember a memorable Christmas period when 2 houses in Harpenden had polypins of Best. Me and my mate Graham had a lot of friends that year.
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Kirkstall Brewery is the northern distributor for Harvey’s.
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No Diggers?
Do you mean an absence of JCB`s or something else?
I don`t think I ever been licked by any piece of construction machinery
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It might have been doggers. I’m not very worldlywide, Alan
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” (not that I’d recognise a digger if one licked me)”
Right there with ya on that.
“I’d given him a full 10 minutes notice and he’d still arrived 5 minutes before me with a half drunk pint in a pub full of Liverpool and United fans.”
Heh. Local Pub legend indeed.
“this one had a 17% impy stout on last week…”
Blimey. Definitely don’t need to stay for another one of those!
“Coxy’s dismay that the strong one has sold out was palpable, but we survived on Azvex.”
(peers up at pic)
A DIPA is nothing to sneeze at.
“Shutting at 6pm, as all St Albans folk have to be up at 6 in the morning to catch the train to Bank”
Commuters are the same everywhere.
“But that had gone, too.”
Don’t tell Paul Bailey!
“So I had the Lees (NBSS 3.5).”
A good thing, dialing it down to 4% after the 8% DIPA.
“Next time I’ll give Coxy 15 minutes notice and he can show me where they hide the Bass.”
(slow golf clap)
Cheers
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Bless him. He got his wife to drop him in town. I’d have done the same (it was raining). Never turn down a meet-up with a mate.
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And bless his wife as well!
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