Saturday 1st February 2025
Word up! Before my Glamorgan Special, a six tick Saturday found me in Staffordshire and the West Midlands. Three each. Two of the highest quality pub counties in the UK.
So how did it contrive to be such a crappy pub day? I'll try to make sense of it all.
The omens weren't good early on. The Boldmere Tap fails to honour its 10am advertised opening hours 'because the kitchen is being refurbished', a lady with a mop tells me. Hmmmm.
Fear not. A trip to a crummy retail park by Lichfield Trent Valley train station provides a more reliable pre-noon opener.
bod Lichfield, Streethay (2926 / 5412)
I'll never love the bod chain, and it isn't just the uncapitalised 'b' but it doesn't help. It is a trial trying to find a staff member willing to pull a pint for me. They are all over at other counters, either making flat whites for the laptop students or bringing cheese toasties and fruit shoots out to bearded young families. I drain my pint of Steerage as quickly as the pub Wi-Fi is being drained by the laptoppers. But as with all bod beers, it is served too cold. They often have that 'green' taste of a beer that's been put on too soon, but this one is decent. So in conclusion, I preferred it to the one on Stoke station, but it lacked the life and warmth of the Matlock and Stafford vehicles.
Lichfield proper next, from where I catch a (confusing) bus to Burntwood / Chasetown and the driver was one of those ultra rare birds - the helpful bus driver. He sees me right on my 'alighting' point.
Vintage Liquid Taphouse, Burntwood (2927 / 5413)
Looking at this one dispassionately after the event, it was an above average micropub. But what stuck in my craw, stopped me from remotely enjoying it, was just how gosh damn unfriendly it was the solo traveller. And yet, the locals, the in-crowd, it is all jokey banter and top hospitality. Balloons are being blown up, streamers hung, impending birthday party? I ask the barmaid but I'm cut off with a one word 'yup!' Okayyyy, we'll complete this transaction in awkward silence then! Very unusual for this part of the world to be insular to the point of rudeness. Peak Norfolk. Main man smiles, but he's the only one of (and I counted) TWELVE people I try smiling at. Face muscles knackered, I expel some of my own vintage liquid at the Gents, and return the empty glass on my excellent 'Gollop with Zest' to the bar. No thanks of course. Barely a grunt.
I've worked out the walk to the Chasetown is only 20 minutes so no need to hop back on the bus. So that's a positive. And I'm taking them where I can get them today!
Hang on, isn't it here where BlackpoolJane comes to watch non league football cos Blackpool are too bloody massive? I'd always assumed it was on Merseyside! Which is very wrong of me.
Uxbridge Arms, Chasetown (2928 / 5418)
Easily today's best pub, the Black Country Ales formula saw to that. But that was its undoing to some extent too, because my stupid brain has a bee in its bonnet of late where BCA pubs formula is rather too errm, 'formulaic'. Like, no shit sherlock, but their carpets are so often the exact same. #BeMoreSpoons The wallpaper looks familiar too. Deep down, I should love BCA pubs for being EXACTLY the pub chain I'd design if I was consulted. Cobs flying off, bench seating, maximum comfort, always warm and well frequented. Barmaid looked up for a chat. But just then, a cute dog arrives and she's suddenly side-tracked. Damn you dog! The Fixed Wheel drinks well even if it does taste double its 3.8% strength. But my abiding memory here will be of my inner mental turmoil re. brain overthinking the BCA formula.
Bus back to Lichfield proper. No ticks here, but Neil off TwXtter tells me the Beacon is VERY pre-emptive so I visit. Was gonna have a half as per my pre-emptive rules but when I see Choc & Vanilla Stout, has to be a pint. A great chat with the barmaid about how she hated ale before she worked here, now she drinks them all! Tonic for me to have such a nice interaction after recent events. Bit too dining busy to be pleasant on this Saturday afternoon, sticky plates took too long to be cleared away, loos blocked after Big John visited yesterday, but yes I can see this Titanic pub making the 2026 GBG.
Time to say farewell to Staffs. Surely West Midlands was going to save the day? Well no, as I sort of mentioned in the intro.
Ale Hub, Mere Green (2929 / 5419)
It actually gets worse. What a non-entity this place was. The expectation that you can do out some abandoned shop / premises, put minimal effort into comfort, design and decor, stick a couple of ales on, and expect to make a go of it. Unsurprisingly , despite being the middle of Saturday afternoon, it is empty save for a couple who arrive at the same time. She's quite smiley, they have a small pooch I nearly step on. My beer, despite being well kept, is too cold, and bland at that. Same brewery as the lovely beer I had in Vintage Liquid earlier, Froth Blowers. The man gets something different and has to take it back cos his is off. Daddy B. messages me, Hull City have lost 1-2 at home to Stoke. I knew drinking all this Titanic today would come back to haunt me. Felt an apt result for the pub experience!
I walk down to Four Oaks station, and one stop to Sutton Coldfield. Pub is very handy which I'm pleased about at this stage of the day .....
Station, Sutton Coldfield (2930 / 5420)
Looked nice, but wasn't. In fact, it was the worst pub experience of a tricky day. First week of Six Nations rugby, which has haunted BRAPA ever since my debut year of Bedfordshire ticking, 2014. England are on, and although there's very few people paying attention, place is full of Guinness drinking goons (they are playing Ireland too!), and I have to fight my way through the scrum like a slutty little hooker where I finally find the solitary handpump hidden right around the back. Two distracted lads sort of jointly pull me a decent pint of Wainwright Gold - which weirdly I am finding is the choice of pubs that only have one beer on. Must be cheap to get in for those feigning a commitment to ale. A guy who might be Gregg Wallace is quite openly doing cocaine at the toilet sink, wiping away the residue. I sit down at a table strewn with coats and a child's toys, someone even sits a baby on it. I hope it has a clean bum. I keep expecting to be moved, but it never happens, which is a plus point I guess. But I refuse to accept this pub is the best that SC has to offer.
It might've been the ale kicking in but it is about now that I decide to embrace the shitness of today and view it as amusing.
Besdies, six ticks, a good pre-emptive, got around really easily, it is all a state of mind .... I've only had a bad day if I decide I have! So yep, definitely the beer kicking in.
But hang on, let's not forget I need to get back to Boldmere Tap (2931 / 5421) which is now open, I even give it a sarcastic round of applause on arrival and this bag lady looks at me like 'errm why are you clapping a pub?'
Barmaid's polite and friendly and smiley. Stoppit! I want to hold a grudge against this place. Joule's pubs? What do you reckon? In my experience, variable. On the one hand, you've got the delicious Royal Oak in Wrexham. But they are just as likely to produce a dour (forgotten its name) in Newport, Shropshire. This was decent, warm and toasty, the usual nice etched mirrors, bricky bits and not-overly-annoying shabby chic stylings. What really helped was the beer, a seasonal winter warmer called Old No.6, delightful ESB-esque end to the day. I'm no fan of their pales (too pissy) so normally go Slumbering Monk, which I ironically fell asleep drinking in Chester's Joules. But all in all, probably second best today after Chasetown.
So in conclusion not a pub crawl I'd recommend, unless you are a GBG completist!
I'm out Monday and Tuesday so hope to be back Wednesday to tell you what's hot in mid-Essex.
Thanks for suffering through it with me, Si
Comments