February 2026. Downham Market.
£9.30 “invested” on an old person’s evening out in Downham Market, and all I had to show for it were some blurred photos from the Crown, which I’m out to convince you is a great pub. Perhaps I can borrow Mrs RM’s superior phone camera (she denies it’s any different).
Even my chosen Chinese takeaway seemed to have closed due to a misunderstanding over a meat cleaver.
But Downham is a town on the up, which has a ring to it. Independent shops, pleasant cafes, the Swan Hotel about to be revived,
and some breweriana for the Pauls.
But only one option for a second pub (bored of the Spoons now, and it was rammed).
The Live & Let Live is as basic a “boozer” (ugh) as you could hope for, an antedote to the sterility of Spoons, and the sort of pub I’ll always be glad exists (see also : Craft Union).
Eddy Grant (78 today, Happy Birthday !) looks on as I judge the Doom Bar.
It’s a 3, Eddy. But is Doom doomed as it jumps off the Rock ?
Anyway, that 3 is better than the good folk of Untappd judged it recently.
In the Good Beer Guide, you say ? Who put it there ? And then I remembered my post from a year ago, and the dog that was even now returning to attack my groin.
Oh. They did.
retiredmartin 
I thought all beers improved when the brewing process moved to Wolverhampton? Isn’t that Doom Bars fate?
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They improved so much that the Wolves brewery was closed last year !
Should be good in Burton, but I just don’t see the volumes holding up for long.
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Wow. Next thing you’re going to tell me is the Burton Unions aren’t in Burton anymore.
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Apologies Dave, I should have known you already knew that. It’s hard to keep up. All the old favourites on the CAMRA website still show Wolverhampton !
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I actually had forgotten so it’s good you corrected me!
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I’m always correcting folk who insist that Doom Bar was brewed in Burton (it was the bottled version).
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Martin, you severely understimate your Ale Powers. If you blogged for it today, 90% chance the Rifle Drum is in the next GBG.
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It was probably the only beer score they had that year.
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It’s closed I see, which seems to be the fate of many pubs with a military note in their names, and perhaps deservedly so.
The old Goat Major here has of late been the Blue Bell, so maybe my point has been grasped?
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The Rifle Drum closed shortly after the “incident” in the alley.
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The “incident”? Did somebody mistake the alley for a platform at Newark Northgate?
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I thought those plastic straws were banned a few years ago?
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Do you remember those straws with sherbet in them as a child, cost about 2p. I suspect it’s those, Lana.
Or that laws don’t apply in Downham Market.
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