retiredmartin

December 2025. Bolsover.

From folk debating the Beast of Bolsover in Wakefield to the actual town where Dennis Skinner was MP for 49 years. Sometimes this blog doesn’t feel completely random

A last tick in Derbyshire for GBG26. Eagle-eyed readers will note I haven’t pinked in the whole map, just put a ring round the ones I needed and them marked them as done. And you know why ? I can’t be bothered. I haven’t even done a spreadsheet this year.

But the Beer Guide is still a wonderful book to live your life by, and Bolsover had been annoying me with its untickedness (?) since Ticknall, and Mrs RM really needed a day out.

Bolsover is a hard sell though, and I guarantee One Small Bag won’t be doing a tourist guide any time soon, despite the worldwide appeal of fruit art.

If one shot sums up the town centre, it’s this one,

the Cross Keys converted to a Dominos.

But it’s a town of 11,673 holding on to most of its pubs, though I can tell you nothing about the Den of Inquity.

We “ummed” and “ahhed” about stumping up £35 to see the castle, and opted just to admire the view to Markham Vale Industrial Estate.

Plenty of folk with English Heritage membership for Christmas out and about on the last Sunday of 2025, and plenty of folk in the Spoons, but we’ll get our tick first, thanks.

The Byron Tap opens dead on noon (hurrah !), the Hofmeister flags,

living room chic, varied seating and board games pitching this in neighbourhood bar territory,

with a soundtrack excusively “young female”,

The cask range (a decent if chilled NBSS 3 Welbeck) is solid,

the snackage remarkable.

Mrs RM goes Party Puffs, I opt for the fish biscuits first see in Wakefield (again).

If I thought that a Ploughmans Lunch in a packet might be was sufficient lunch, I was wrong.