retiredmartin

February 2026. Letchworth Garden City.

If you can’t be bothered to read the next week’s deluge of posts, here’s the spoiler: Letchworth was really good, with a great variety of drinking establishments (I’ll let CAMRA debate whether they’re “pubs”).

Start onLeys Avenue, the main shopping street; there’s a rambling furniture shop called Martin’s (clearance sale on NOW) at the end of the road where we once bought sofas we could never realistically carry up and down the stairs to our second floor flat facing Ming Wah and The Great Wall.

Yes, we started married life with two (2) top Chinese takeaways on our doorsteps, but rather fewer (less ?) great pubs. Which is why we moved to Hitchin a year later.

There was certainly no craft in 1991, and Crafty’s arrived to little fanfare 25 years later.

We chose* this unfussy bar for our own 25th wedding anniversary, an occasion notable for the police intervention in the Spoons over the road.

It’s an unfussy sort of place, a bit “homemade” but with spotless toilets, a top HiFi and that proper pub backless bench seating the Pauls love.

There’s a 1991 soundtrack of U2 and Pearl Jam, artisanal snacks and one of those odd beer lists that starts with Grolsch and then surprises you with Attic.

But it’s Number 16 you’ll be interested in, the rarely seen Devizes delight your lone cask beer, and you’ll know by now that one beer is plenty etc.

Is this 6X as good as in the Anchor, High Offley ? Probably not, but the temperature is perfect, a rich, chewy pint (NBSS 3.5) that slips down so quickly you might think I’m in a rush to catch a train home or something.

Blimey, 6X in a craft bar. They’ll be reviving Draught Bass next.

*_{We didn’t really choose to celebrate our anniversary, of course, it was completely accidental}