THE LONE TREE ON STONNALL HILL, A DISCARDED BLOSSOM HILL BOTTLE

February 2026. Stonnall.

A rare new GBG pub double, and just a 20 minute stroll from Lazy Hill in the West Midlands down to Stonnall over the Staffs border.

I am delighted to find I know nothing about Stonnall (pop. 1,546) so I use AI. Chat GPT tells me it’s the 3,756th dullest town on earth, but that may be an hallucination. And it may have counted Shirley 3,755 times.

“Visit the famous Lone tree” it tells me, so I do.

Every afternoon at 3:45pm the entire population of the villages make a pilgrimage there, with their dogs. I spent ages trying to get an atmospheric shot; this was the best I could do;

It’s no Sycamore Gap, is it ?

Reading the information board at the Pinfold you might imagine you’re in a major tourist site,

and there’s a temptation to prise open the time capsule, but we all know that inside it’s the 2016 Good Beer Guide document listing the Brexit benefits.

The park contains discarded Blossom Hill rather than Bulmers,

and our pub is a classic 4pm opener,

Though, of course, there’s already a couple in at 3:58.

It’s a busy community pub, the sort Banks’s used to do well, unfussy and welcoming.

I ask the landlady what the chap in front (Mr 3:59) is drinking, she says “They’re all good !“, and I suspect they are; the Butty Bach is cool and creamy (NBSS 3.5).

I consider asking about the bizarre appeal of the Stonnall tree, but settle on weather. It’s about to change, apparently.

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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.

27 thoughts on “THE LONE TREE ON STONNALL HILL, A DISCARDED BLOSSOM HILL BOTTLE”

  1. “and just a 20 minute stroll from Lazy Hill in the West Midlands down to Stonnall over the Staffs border.”

    (looks up)
    Still a bunch of boring names.

    “And it may have counted Shirley 3,755 times.”

    (slow golf clap)

    ““Visit the famous Lone tree” it tells me, so I do.”

    LOL! Get this! I opened up Copilot (the AI by Microsoft) and asked it about the Lone Tree at Stonnall. It told me this:
    “Absolutely — there is some information available about the lone tree on Stonnall Hill, and interestingly, one of your open tabs already points to a blog post about it.”

    And then proceeded to quote your post! 😁

    “Every afternoon at 3:45pm the entire population of the villages make a pilgrimage there, with their dogs.”

    Well, they have to keep it watered.

    “Reading the information board at the Pinfold you might imagine you’re in a major tourist site,”

    ‘MIGHT’ is doing a lot of work there.

    “and there’s a temptation to prise open the time capsule,”

    Heck no! That’s like opening Pandora’s box!

    “The park contains discarded Blossom Hill rather than Bulmers,”

    Is that a step up, or a step down?

    “Though, of course, there’s already a couple in at 3:58.”

    (looks down)
    Ah; classic ‘blur them in the mirror’ trick.

    “I consider asking about the bizarre appeal of the Stonnall tree, but settle on weather.”

    Always a safe subject.

    “It’s about to change, apparently.”

    (looks down)
    I think that just means it’s time to swap out the batteries.

    Cheers,

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    1. Thanks for letting me know that AI is quoting me as the definitive source on the Stonnall tree. I typed “lone tree Stonall” into a search engine just now and my post came up first as well.

      It’s good to know my forensic and completely accurate reporting is proving useful to our AI overlords. I should have claimed there’s gold buried under that tree and seen what happened.

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  3. Never yet visited Stonnal. Hope that tree gets left alone before I get there one day. Seeing the Blossom Hill bottle brought back a nasty memory. I once drank it for the first time at a meal with friends in Canada Water. I had way too much and got a bit loud. Back at my friends’ house I was throwing it all up for an age in their downstairs bathroom. If this is not embarrassing enough as a guest, the chap was a regular attender at Alcoholics Anon and the lady was a Muslim. I have never touch BH since.

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      2. Big chuckle for that, Lana.

        Was there an urgent wish to see Cleethorpes in the drizzle ? Or just really fancy haddock and chips from a Grimsby takeaway. I once drove from Cambridge after work just for fish and chips, but it was a nice evening.

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      3. I always wanted to see those partic places that I heard people criticise over the years. I was fine there, but I think I should have gone alone as Franc rushed me on!

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      5. Noted! I only had an hour there. I went to Scunthorpe too where I was impressed to see an open bible in a glass case on the street. Never seen that before.

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