Welcome to Kings Heath

An afternoon's excursion into south Birmingham, where I planned to visit a micro, a cricket club and a backstreet heritage pub.
This was my first visit to Kings Heath and, to be honest, it didn't shout out 'look what you've been missing!' when I disembarked bus number 35 on the High Street.

So, what have I learnt about it?
Kings Heath was originally part of Worcestershire pre-1974 and lost its apostrophe in a contentious grammar issue in 2009.  There's a plaque on the Hare & Hounds (which I maybe should have visited in hindsight) due to UB40 playing their first gig there.  And residents include comedian Joe Lycett and Anthony E Pratt, who created the board game Cluedo.

Right, that's enough knowledge about the area, where's the micro pub?

Hop & Scotch (9 Institute Road, Kings Heath, Birmingham, B14 7EG)
This is a shop conversion tucked between Timpson's and Iceland, opened in 2018. Sofas in the spot by the window, high and low tables throughout the rest of the place, stark concrete ceiling and ventilation ducts, plus a superb choice of cask, keg and cans.
Arriving just at the time a group of blokes were being served meant craning to see the pump clips beyond them. I could see Neepsend, Bank Top, Kinver and Phoenix, whose 'Monkey Town' dark mild I picked.  A superb beer. 

Hop & Scotch have been the recipients of a fair few Local Pub of the Year awards - they've just been credited as Birmingham CAMRA Pub of the Year for the third year on the trot.
Although I'm not quite sure how I'd feel if I gave them a nice framed award and found it had been hung in the WC.

The top right 'best pub in the solar system' is the one you really want to win.

I could have stayed and picked another beer from the blackboards listing these at the side of the bar (yep, didn't see that when I was trying to peer past other customers on arrival).  But I needed to move on and keep to schedule.

Is that Life After Football on the corner of Institute Road, supplementing his income by knocking out the Blues merchandise during the Easter holidays?

Resisting a flag or scarf, I strolled south of the heart of Kings Heath, veering right at All Saints and down Vicarage Road.

Time to find a picturesque pub...

Red Lion (229 Vicarage Road, Kings Heath, Birmingham, B14 7LY)
The Red Lion was built by the Priory Estate Company in 1904 to serve the new middle-class housing which they'd just built in this area.  It was one of a new era of 'improved pubs', during which time the plan was to grant fewer licenses and ensure the ones given were to a better standard of pub.
And how better to make a statement that pub-going was a savoury pastime and the Red Lion a respectable place than to design it in a medieval religious style with carvings of monks quaffing ale. 

It certainly looks great from outside and was welcoming and comfortable enough inside too.  There were several rooms although I made it no further than the main bar where I was confronted by this beer choice...

The picture below gives away that I picked the one with the "I'm Hazy" tag hanging from the pump...

There was an odd mix of Shrek on TV and 'Last night a DJ Saved My Life' piped out the speakers, Shrek being watched avidly by one chap and ignored by everyone else.  

A toddler in a Birmingham City top, part of a pan-generational birthday bash in the back room, waddled behind the bar every time he wasn't been watched. "Start 'em young", said the bar staff when the youngster was retrieved - I'm not sure if that was encouragement for drinking, relaxing child labour laws, or supporting the Blues.

Other than that there was a pleasing mix of custom in the Red Lion, doing a decent trade on a Saturday afternoon.

Moving on, I took a bit of a long way round the quiet residential side-streets as I made my way back to the A35 and down to the cricket club. 

Kings Heath Cricket and Sports Club (Charlton House, 247 Alcester Road, Kings Heath, B14 6DT)
Ah...beer guide clubs. Sometimes great, sometimes less-so, often with the precarious feeling that you shouldn't really be there.
This one comes with the disclaimer on WhatPub that the "bar may only be open to members" and something about ringing the buzzer and signing in.
I bowled in confidently, hoping everyone would take me for a regular, only to find myself in a completely empty room.

The bar looked out two ways onto a sports bar full of frivolity and laughter, protected by a key-card lock, and onto the function room on t'other side where I'd found myself.
Oh well, at least I got served a pint of Yorkshire Heart 'Silverheart IPA' with no fuss (Wye Valley 'HPA' and 'Butty Bach' being the other options).

I timed my departure - cheerio empty room - just right to hop aboard a bus across the road and travel up to Moseley.

Hitting the bell and alighting at a crossroads in Moseley, Spoons next on the agenda...

Elizabeth of York (12a St Mary's Row, Moseley, Birmingham, B13 7JG)
It's not an especially glamourous one - the low ceiling variety stretching some way back from the road, with a staircase leading to a small balcony.
It gets to be named after the wife of King Henry VII due to Elizabeth giving the plot of land opposite the pub for the building of a chapel, where St Mary's Church now stands.

Not the biggest cask line-up on this occasion, a couple of lines being cleaned leaving a choice from the guests ales of Salopian 'Darwen's Origin' or the IPA from Cov...

There's an odd sculpture rising up to the balcony which I later learnt commemorates JRR Tolkien, resident nearby from 1896 to 1908.  It was surprisingly quiet for an afternoon Wetherspoon's experience, making for an uneventful half-hour spent browsing through Tim's propoganda mag and enjoying the Byatts beer, which tasted stronger than its 5.5%.

I could have and should have hopped aboard another bus to reach the next pub, especially as I managed to take a wrong turn somewhere and ended up lost in the streets of Edgbaston.

Twenty-five minutes later I found myself outside The Old Moseley Arms, a pub that I'd intended to make it to for some time.

Old Moseley Arms (54 Tindal Street, Balsall Heath, Birmingham, B12 9QU)
This is a real gem.  Which I've typically struggled to photograph outside due to parked cars and inside because...well, let's just say it had been a long day and the care-taken for quality pub pictures had diminished by this point.
Here's the great wood panelled bar counter in the right-side front room, the one to the left being a mirror copy but stretching further back.

Enville Ale, Butty Bach and HPA were on offer, but I wasn't going to turn down a pint of Bathams Best when given the opportunity in Brum.  A great trad best bitter, which ended my day nicely.
Accompanied by a paneer bhuna from the Tandoori menu and Arsenal on an enormous screen just above my head.

That completed minor explorations of a bit of Birmingham that was new to me, although I appreciate I missed a couple of one-star heritage pubs, the place where UB40 first played and the chance to bit intrepid with some 'tastier' looking boozers.
Can't do everything - as I keep on being told.