retiredmartin

April 2026. Retford.

I had a look at my last blog post from Retford (a bit like Alistair Cooke’s Letter from America without the golf ) while walking the mile into town and realised how little had changed.

It’s a low-key market town of 24,000 (exactly, per Wiki) souls; nicely pedestrianised but far too quiet,

though as long as you want plastic seats and a 99 it has everything you need.

“Soft & Creamy, Light & Dreamy“, just like me.

Low key, but a rather shinier pub scene than a decade or so ago. You’ve got a Spoons, whatever that BeerHeadZ is called this week, the aforementioned Brew Shed, and the Idle Valley Tap.

But for a craft beer scene you need a place with “Craft” in the title, I guess.

Now, humour me here.

Go on the CAMRA website (here) and see if you can see the entry Retford Craft House, centre of town just west of the Dominie Cross. Zoom in and you get the Liberal Club (C), zoom out and the Liberals become the Craft House (P).

Anyway, I liked Craft House, a rapid pint of murky Two by Two Snake Eyes being cool and (yes !) chewy (NBSS 3.5)

It’s a fairly plain setting, reminiscent of the Hinckley Elbow Room, but with its swivel chairs, posh scratchings, and barrage of early ’80s pop (“Down Under”, “Shut Up”) and mixed crowd it felt a place to linger.

But I couldn’t linger.

The hourly train back to Sheffield left in 16 minutes, the best route to the station was via Thrumpton lane and took the average walker 19.

Well, never in doubt, even had time to stop and give two walkers in that green bit directions to the centre (“Right at Thrumpton Lane, pint in the Sun etc etc”).

Except I was the wrong side of the fence below.

Low Level station only accessible via High Level, a five minute round trip that would see me missing the 14:59 by a minute. If only I’d read my own blog;

“It’s a bit of a slog from the station to the town. One set of platforms are for the north/south trains, the other set for east/west, so it takes 5 minutes to reach the ticket barrier.”