Spalding - Never Mind the Tulips

Saturday 15th August: The football season was getting underway for most of the 72 league clubs, Reading and Luton providing the early-kick off 7-goal thriller.  Don't expect the same excitement from the billion pound Prem teams when they get going next weekend.
It was already week 2 for the National League North and I was on the road to attend Oxford City FCs first away game of 26/27 in the southern reaches of Lincolnshire.

Spalding sits in the Fens between Peterborough and Boston, is home to just over 30,000 folks, famous for tulips and pumpkins.
Wetherspoon's would inevitably be my first port of call being as it's in the 2026 Good Beer Guide and I was arriving early and am quite partial to a second breakfast. 
Forget mobility scooters outside pubs.  This was parked outside the Ivy Wall...

Sadly the pub itself is less photogenic than the horse and cart.  The glass-fronted affair will disappoint anyone hoping for an ancient market town building or a wall of ivy for that matter.

The Ivy Wall (18-19 New Rd, Spalding PE11 1DQ)

Inside, it's one of those long narrow 'Spoons with lines of regimented tables and the bar towards the back.  I reckon Tim Martin himself would be hard-pushed to identify some of the locations if faced with 'Where in the World of Spoons Am I' contest. 

There is a separate room to the back which was proving popular for families with pushchairs, plus an outdoor patio where a fair few customers had settled despite the overcast morning.
The search for something a little bit different ended in the smart toilets, where you get a glass-fronted display of no-lo beers to peruse whilst at the urinals.

The guest cask ales on my visit were Hadrian Borders 'Northumbrian Gold' or Ilkley 'Ruby Jane'.  The Northumbrian for me - a malty 4.5% ale, more brown than golden.

My breakfast wrap picture comes solely for the purpose of my continued grumble about the size of extra baked bean portions.  50/50 recently for me, as to whether £1.08 buys a decent size bowl or the thimble-sized ramekin.  Thimble-size in Spalding...

Moving on, a short stroll round to the market place took me to the Red Lion hotel, complete with 'Jimi Hendrix Stayed Here' blue plaque.

The Red Lion Hotel (Market Place, Spalding, PE11 1SU)
The Red Lion is a smart 18th century inn with a seating area in front of it providing people-watching opportunities in the heart of the town.  Hendrix's stay is the big claim-to-fame, his visit made during the Spring Bank Holiday in 1967 when the Barbeque '67 festival took place in the Tulip Bulb Hall.  Hendrix reputedly hung out in the hotel bar with Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker, before sharing a bill with Geno Washington, Zoot Money, Cream, Pink Floyd and The Move, amongst others.  Tickets £1.

Passing the busy outdoor tables, the marvellous tiled flooring in the doorway makes for a good first impression...

Which just gets better...

A rare outlet for Bass in this area, apparently.
The building looks big from the outside, although the public bar just takes up the front room with seating either side of the door, a dining room glimpsed down a corridor beyond the check-in desk.
If you don't fancy the Bass, Sharpe's 'Cornish Best' or Black Sheep 'Best Bitter' were available. 

A good pint of Bass in a cracking pub.

With a fair number of 'No Cask Ale' venues in the town centre, the remaining place that I really wanted to visit was the Priors Oven, achieving top pint-pot marking scores on the CAMRA website.

The Priors Oven (1 Sheep Market, Spalding, PE11 1BH)
This was once part of the Priory of Spalding, the structure dating back to around 1230.  With its distinctive shape and vaulted ceiling, this bit of the building once served as a monastic prison, becoming a bakery in later years, then the first micropub in Lincolnshire in 2013.
It looks great, not needing many folks to fill it up with just four tables and a couple of stools at the bar.

There were three cask ales available: Humpty Dumpty 'Hathor' alongside 'New Mexico' pale ale or 'Dr Fox's Cunning Linctus' bitter, both brewed by local Tydd Steam. 
All priced at £4 a pint and served on gravity from casks behind the bar.
The cask coolers must have been doing their job throughout the recent hot weather, as the New Mexico was on great form - a crisp hoppy pale ale. 

With plenty of time on my hands, I strolled to the historic Ayscoughfee Hall which houses a small museum of local history and curios.  Well worth a visit.
The gardens to the rear of the house were playing host to a festival with music and games and deckchairs, but sadly Shake It Off Stage, the Taylor Swift tribute act at 15:40 clashed with the football.
Probably not a line-up which will go down in history like the Barbeque '67, so I departed for the peaceful environs of the River Welland.

The riverside walk took me past some grand Georgian houses and Dutch-style architecture, leading me to another pub about 10-minutes walk from the town centre.

The Moorings (123 Commercial Rd, Spalding PE11 2HD)
This one-time coal wharf used to be a boat hire centre from the late nineteenth century before being converted to a pub in the 1980's.
You get checked carpet, sofas and armchair and Notts County v Leicester City in the front room, the casual bit, then dining tables to the rear and side.
Fullers 'London Pride' or Timothy Taylor 'Golden Ale' on the bar.
Lots of cheery luncheon trade.

I  took my beer out onto the two-level decking at the rear of the pub, where the floating algae on the water beside me made it feel like we were moving on a boat and made me a little queasy.  Or perhaps that was the Golden Ale.  Not on the best of form.

🕝Two-thirty - time to head to Spalding United's Sir Halley Stewart Field and join the throngs at the turnstiles.

Spalding United were promoted via the play-offs from the Southern League last season.
They've spent a fair bit of money improving facilities during their rise to this level, including the installation of a smart 3G pitch.

The club bar served a cask Batemans 'XB', the converted shipping container served cheesy chips, and picnic tables provided a spot to sit in the afternoon sunshine awaiting kick-off.
Dropkick Murphy's, AC/DC and Guns 'n' Roses made up a rock soundtrack on the tannoy system.  Then someone gave a speech about this being the first game Spalding had hosted at this level of the football pyramid.
A bit like Tom Cruise before the World Cup final, but better.

I'd love to provide all the details of Tyrone Marsh's goal for Oxford on the 40th minute and the controversy surrounding it.  But that was the exact moment that I picked to pop to the loo.
Oxford City don't have enough travelling fans to provide a roar which can be heard in the gents, so I had no idea we'd gone 1-0 up until glancing at the scoreboard a few minutes later.

Spalding had enjoyed the lion's share of the ball during the first half and looked threatening, so it was tough on them to be behind at half time.

The second half was a bit more even, both sides creating some good chances, leading to an exciting finish and a few nerve-wracking moments for City when the ball bounced around the box and could have gone anywhere.
Not as exciting as seeing Britt Assombolonga come on for Harborough Town a few days later in a Tuesday night home fixture for Oxford, though.

Good luck to Spalding for the rest of the season.
The town had made for a top lower league away day - sunshine, Bass and tulips...what more can I ask for? 

Golazo! in Gedling

A second post from Nottingham, containing a quartet of pubs outside the city centre, a superb pub dog, hanging baskets, live music, and a 6% strong premium ale from Tyne & Wear which slowed me down somewhat.
After visiting several central pubs, I elected to explore further afield, catching a bus eastwards to Gedling.
This one'll do...

Gedling was once a village on the southern edge of Sherwood Forest, although it has long been swallowed up into the city, a busy collier operating here throughout the 20th century.  Gedling Borough is huge, but Gedling itself is home to around 6,800 folk who are very limited pub-wise.  Just the Gedling Inn at one point, which explains why Castle Rock spotted this as a location to expand to.

The Willowbrook (13 Main Road, Gedling, Nottingham, NG4 3HQ)

The Willowbrook was a club for many years before being purchased by Castle Rock in 2014, refurbished and opened as their 20th venue.
It's one of the city's Art Deco pubs, although not as striking as the likes of The Crown or Vale.

There were four ales on offer from Castle Rock themselves: ''Harvest Pale', Elsie Mo', 'Preservation' and 'Screech Owl', plus an Adnams football special and Timothy Taylor 'Landlord'.  I returned the Preservation as undrinkable and despite an inistance that it only went on that morning this was switched graciously for the Adnams 'Golazzo!'

Most of the late afternoon customers had chosen to sun themselves with a choice of benches out front or a patio area to the rear.  So it wasn't especially thrilling sat inside in front of the tennis in what was a very quiet visit.

I strolled back down to the Burton Road, crossing the boundary into Carlton and making my way to the magnificent-looking Old Volunteer pub.

The Old Volunteer (35 Burton Road, Carlton, Nottingham, NG4 3DQ)
You'll have to trust me that the frontage is magnificent - the direction of the sun meant I ended up with a picture focussed on a bright white wall.
The first record of a pub on this site dates back to 1832.  It's been tied to Ind Coope and Ansell's breweries over the years until falling into disrepair in the early 2000's.  New owners took over in 2014 and revitalised the pub.

There were two banks of 5 hand pumps stretched across a big bar counter from which I picked a Jolly Boys 'Supa Citra', brewed up in Barnsley.

A fine pint, in a cracking pub with Stevie Wonder playing from the speakers and an uncontested best pub dog of the day...

Leaving the Volunteer, I caught a bus to take me a little way along Carlton Hill for a new Wetherspoon's tick and a spot of tea.

The Free Man (334-336 Carlton Hill, Carlton, NG4 1JD)
This building spent over 40-years as a Co-Op store before being converted into Carlton's JDW in 2010.
Being a supermarket conversion it's pretty plain - a mainly rectangular room with little natural light and regimented tables and chairs.
Beyond the expected Spoons cask ales only Moorhouse 'Pendle Witches Brew' and Maxim 'Maximus' were showing on the app.
So it was a foolhardy 6% Maximus strong ale that I ordered to accompany my food.
If ever a beer could look like it's capable of causing damage in a picture, it's this one...

 

I grabbed a table by the open front doors - the best of both worlds as it was too hot for me on the benches out front in direct sunshine and too hot within the depths of the pub.

One sweet potato chickpea and spinach curry later, straining at the belt a little, I was ambling along the road and deciding it would be a good idea to duck into the Lincoln Green-run Brickyard pub, a recent Good Beer Guide entry.

The Brickyard (1A Standhill Road, Carlton, Nottingham, NG4 1JL)
The second pub on this post which used to be a social club.  In this case, the Latvian Social Club which sat empty for a couple of years before Lincoln Green stepped in, opening in the spring of 2018.  It's almost as if something utterly catastrophic happened in 2016 causing the Latvians to abandon their club...hmmm.

The pub is neatly designed with a central bar creating several seating areas out of a single room.

The name is a nod to the big Thorneywood Brick Works which supplied the bricks to build St Pancras station, and would have been nearby prior to the 1960s when the works were replaced by housing.

Here's the beer list...

A Lincoln Green 'Meadow Song' for me - the one they've put the most effort into, utlisiing all the colours of chalk pens to recreate flowers of the meadow.  Unsurprisingly, a floral pale ale.
This is a pub I was comfy in - a decent number of punters in early evening, the odd Forest shirt and pub dog, a bit of decent '60s music, and a staff member who recognised the obscure band on my t-shirt and began talking to me about psyche rock and music venues in Brussells.

As is often the case, there are a couple of less obvious pubs I'd like to have visited in Carlton, but time was flying by.  Another bus took me back to Sneinton market where I hopped off and made my way to this stunner...

Bath Inn (1 Handel Street, Nottingham, NG3 1JE)

I wondered how I'd never been here before, but then discovered the Bath Inn only reopened in 2021 after a long period of closure.
Well...they're making sure no-one will miss it now with an extravagant display of hanging baskets, flags, bows and whistles.  Possibly not whistles.

I didn't really explore the interior of this pub properly because it was fairly busy and the effects of the Maxim Maximus hadn't worn off.  It's a place that deserves a return visit.
Cask beers available were all local: Pheasantry 'Best Bitter', Black Iris 'Endless Summer', Lenton Lane 'Twist & Stout' and Blue Monkey 'BG Sips'.
An 'Endless Summer' for me - it's beginning to feel like one - the Basford brewery's session IPA.

Enjoyed on a comfy side table with plenty of quirky pub decorations to look at whilst the soundtrack was Glenn Miller, Sinatra, Bobby Darin, and The Andrews Sisters.
Great music, great pub.

A short walk took me to Billy Bootleggers, proudly advertising itself as a Dive Bar.

If you think Billy Bootleggers is a dubious name, it used to be called Percy Picklebackers!
No cask ale, so I sat with a Goose Island 'Midway IPA'.
I ended the evening here - rather than in Nottingham's central cask ale pubs - because the bar offered a couple of live bands playing on a corridor free-of-charge.

In the picture above is a band called Skorts from Brookyn, NY, playing a sort of nineties shoegaze/post punk mash-up.

That ended a good day out in Nottingham, a city I've visited so many times yet still manage to find new venues.
Including the next morning's breakfast stop in the Spoons by Trent Uni.

A very average breakfast, if I'm honest, in a pub that was maybe resting on it's laurels since the students went home for summer.
But it fuelled an epedition to try and find football stickers for all the European clubs that had visited the City Ground last season...

Ah well, not all of them.
I really should have gone to some of those games.