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.

Nottingham: Lions, Falcons and Dragons

Back in Nottingham.
Home of Castle Rock, stone lions guarding the old council house, a higher proportion than usual of folks in heavy metal t-shirts, and plenty of houses on the market vacated by ex-Premier League managers.

On the agenda for the day were a few 2026 Good Beer Guide pubs that I've missed previously, a Spoons I've not been to before, looking weird taking pictures of football stickers on lamp posts and a bit of live music in the evening.

Right...let's head up to Canning Circus.
This confluence of roads heading to the city centre is a bit of a hotspot for pubs, where I really thought I'd done them all.
There's the Lincoln Green Sir John Borlase Warren, the Good Fellow George in an old bank, and Blue Monkey's Organ Grinder.
No-one's resurrected this one yet though...

My target on this occasion was the Falcon...

Falcon Inn (1 Alfreton Road, Nottingham, NG7 3JE)
An early arrival meant the landlady was pottering around outside rearranging pavement tables, following me in as I examined the available beers with a soundtrack of 'Under the Boardwalk' (the original, not Bruce Willis, who I seem to remember did quite a job).

There were two Lenton Lane beers available on cask: '200 Not Out' and '36° North', plus Oakham 'Citra', Ossett 'White Rat', Titanic 'Chocolate and Vanilla Stout'...
But I can't come to Nottingham without having a pint of Shippo's...

The Flacon was purpose-built in 1853, spending most of it's life as a Shipstone's pub.  When the brewery closed in 1991 Greenall Whitley's took over and converted old living quarters on the first floor to a dining room but thankfully didn't fiddle with the trad two room layout downstairs.
The old Shipstones pub sign has pride of place in the side room.

I took a seat on the bench seating in front of the bar, where it took until I was about halfway down my pint for the landlady to decide that I probably wasn't that suspicious (despite taking pictures of pub signs and pump clips) and that she could do some jobs away from the bar.
The 'Gold Star' was in great condition and very easy to drink. 
'Under the Boardwalk' turned out to be just one of a Drifters greatest hits soundtrack.

I can't believe I've walked past The Falcon and paid it no heed previously.  A lovely pub.

My next destination, next to the Theatre Royal, is another pub I've passed many a time yet never thought about stepping into.

Lillie Langtry's (4 South Sherwood Street, Nottingham, NG1 4BY)
"Lillie Langtry's est. 1761" says the sign on the front of the pub.  There may have been a pub on the site that far back although the current building isn't quite so ancient, and Victorian actress and socialite Lillie Langtry wasn't born for another 92 years.
Lillie, a reputed mistress of Edward VII, who was encouraged to act on the stage by Oscar Wilde, performed at Nottingham's Theatre Royal in 1885.  The pub was formally known as the Peach Tree until naming itself after her in 1981.

Local cask brews came from Welbeck Abbey and Castle Rock; Ossett providing a stout; St Austell the beer everyone has heard of; and there were two ales from Barnsley's Stancil Brewery on offer.
I picked the Stancil 'Rutherford', priced at a hefty £3.20 for the half pint.  This time I really should have waved the CAMRA card for the discount they offer.

There was a diverse cross-section of customers in this pub - a surprising number of obvious regulars - my surpise being that you'd make this your local if the cask at over 6-quid a pint.
It was just a little too busy for me to wander around taking pictures of the Lillie Langtry portaits and memorabilia.
Instead I sat on a high bench to the side, supping the reasonably well-kept pale ale.  Turns out it's a World Cup brew, named after the location of the stadium that will host the final and hopped with US Willanette hops. 

Football was the topic of conversation by the locals at the bar: "Ramsay got one for winning it, Southgate got one for losing it", one chap stated as it was pondered what honor could be bestowed upon a German manager for success in the tournament.

I coundn't really give two hoots about the national team and am tired of pubs being draped in flags.
Time to move on to two pubs that had resisted the urge to decorate themselves for the football. The first one being down this alley...

I have visited the Barrel Drop before, but didn't recognise it at all.
"Have you moved alleys?" I asked identifying myself as a complete numpty before I'd even got a beer in my hand.

Barrel Drop (7 Hurts Yard, Nottingham, NG1 6JD)
This city centre micro opened at the end of 2014 and was proudly boasting of selling some 700 different beers by the time they celebrated their first birthday.
They're now run in partnership with local Magpie Brewery with handpumps replacing the original racked casks on gravity.

A Red Dog Ales 'Pit Black' for me, I think, as I fancied veering to the dark side.
Although I could quite happily have sat and worked my way through all those - no idea what the beer's like but that's four excellent pump clips.

The layout is U-shaped with two sections of seating leading off either side from the beer menu.

Probably best not to let me look at what's on offer on the keg list.  Sat in the corner reading the local Left Lion magazine with a soundtrack of Fontaines DC, Biffy Clyro, and Jimmy Eat World, I was quite happy.  Get me started on the Billionaire Shortbread Stout and I may never have left.

It was a very short distance from Hurts Yard to my next Good Beer Guide pub on Long Row.
Looking great...

The Dragon (67 Long Row, Nottingham, NG1 6JE)
This is a pub I instantly really liked and even a flower arrangement to one side of the bar couldn't dent my enthusiasm.
The frontage is magnificent.  The interior is an odd shape (narrow, set on two levels with a kink in direction midway through).  And they're even connected to the Nottingham sandstone cave network

 

The Dragon traces it's history back to the seventeenth century when it was known as the Green Dragon.  It was rebuilt in 1879, spent many years serving up Shipstone's beers as the George & Dragon, then became the City Gate Tavern for a while.

From the choice across 4 hand pumps I opted to stay dark with a Lenton Lane ' Sample & Hold', a rich dark chocolate porter brewed with five different types of malts.

This was quiet, customer-wise, on a weekday afternoon with just a couple of solo drinkers inside and a few more making the most of a hidden hanging basket-laden outdoor space to the back.
Roots Manuva, Curtis Mayfield and Phylis Dixon was a sample of the music being played whilst I sat contentedly in this wonderful city centre hostelry.

The clock had ticked past 3pm enabling me to check-in and drop my bag off at my hotel.
Time for a cup of tea and a short break before heading to the bus stop to explore a little further afield.
More from Nottingham in the next post...

From Beeston to the Malt Cross Tavern

In which we make a short hop out of Nottingham to the town of Beeston.  You've got a choice of train, tram, or bus to make the 3-mile journey.  We took the train on which we barely had time to settle into our seats before it was time to get off and admire Beeston's hilly scenery.

According to Wikipedia, Beeston has one of the highest concentrations of pubs in the United Kingdom.  Which makes me feel a little guilty that we were only making a flying visit to the three current beer guide entries.
First up: The Crown...

The Crown Inn (Church Street, Beeston, NG9 1FY)
The entry in the 1975 Good Beer Guide, when this was a Hardys & Hansons pub, tells us it's a "splendid example of what a pub should be".
It also notes that it is "under threat of modernisation" and I guess the results of that are what we encountered on arrival, entering through the second door to the right hand side of the building.  This led into a comfy spacious area which was the result of a 1976 extension.  There's a large bar counter in this section, some not-so-old wooden beams, plenty of proper pub seating, and old black and white pictures of the town on the walls.

I took my Dancing Duck '22' golden ale on an excursion through the pub to explore the older bits.
The locals were gathered in the warm and cosy games room where the darts board was proving popular.  A stone floored corridor leads through to the front door of the pub with another busy small room to one side and the original public bar to the other. 

This is a wonderful pub room - a bench under the window with three small tables lined along it and a minuscule partitioned snug at the far end.

The Crown is a multi-award winner, with a choice of drinks that could easily keep you here all day.  Other than the Dancing Duck brew I picked, casks served up beers from Oakham, Shiny, Dark Star, Marble, Abbeydale, and Nene Valley.  Plus crafty kegs and real ciders.

The 'three seat confessional' snug

We moved on, walking back around Middle Street to the The Star Inn which looks out across at the tram stop and the enormous Tesco Extra.

The Star Inn (22 Middle Street, Beeston, NG9 1FX)
The first thing that I noticed about the Star was the Boon mural next to the bins on the side wall; the second was the marvelous Shipstone's Brewery windows.
There were several rooms leading off from the central hallway - main bar to the front, lounge to the rear, and sports bar extending into the building at the side.

We settled on a high table by the bar.
Beers were helpfully listed on a board on the wall with pump clips placed on a light-dark / low-high ABV grid.  There was Marstons 'Pedigree' or Oakham 'Citra' for those wanting something a bit familiar, plus lots of local choice, few of which I recognised.

I picked an Alter Ego 'Incognito' from Alfreton, over the border in Derbyshire, and settled in the main bar with a pub cob (not up to the standards of the Black Country, but it filled a gap).

A 10-minute walk took us to the third Beeston beer guide entry.  The Alexandra Hotel is a big Victorian red-brick building located next to the railway line and handily close to the station.

Alexandra Hotel (85 Dovecote Lane, Beeston, NG9 1JG)
The pub dates back to 1899 when it was constructed by Ind Coope & Co.  It ended up in the hands of Allied Breweries who let it fall into disrepair, finally to be rescued by Castle Rock (Tynemill at that time) in 1994.

Faced with a gamble of which door to pick on the way in, we headed right into a self-contained square room with high red ceiling and loads of old brewery posters on the wall.
The main bar was actually through the door to the left and we didn't get to see this.  I'll revisit and sit in the other bar one day, when I return to Beeston and do the town more justice

I enjoyed a quick half of 'Foxx' session IPA from Derby's Little Brewing Company, my pick from the third great selection of beers of the day.
Our visit to the Alexandra was short as we checked the train times and raced out the door to catch the next service back to Nottingham. 

Where we headed to the Bunkers Hill Tavern (36-38 Hockley, Nottingham, NG1 1FP) which was packed to the rafters with the majority of punters settled in to watch Forest on the telly.
I've watched footy here a few times and really like the place - cracking atmosphere and a couple of decent pints of First and Last 'Reiver', a best bitter all the way from Northumberland.

We then strolled up the lively streets of the Lace Market for a revisit to the Angel Brewery (7 Stoney Street, Lace Market, Nottingham, NG1 1LG).
A multi-roomed pub with a good crowd in, outside loos plastered with stickers, some good music, brew kit taking up a lot of space in the corner.

 

Then our final stop was a bit of a revelation - somewhere that was completely off my radar, but found by the friends who'd whizzed up to Nottingham to join us for the evening.

Malt Cross Music Hall (16 St James's Street, Nottingham, NG1 6FE)
I must have walked past this many time when it was a cafe in the late '80's, St James's Street being a regular haunt for my youthful CD shopping in Way Ahead Records.
It's a Grade II listed former Victorian Music Hall, which was built in 1877.  It's had a recent restoration in 2014 thanks to Lottery funding bringing this hall back to its former glory.
And it is now run on a not-for-profit model in conjunction with the YMCA.

Five hand pumps offered a stouts from Castle Rock and Magic Rock, a super Black Iris black IPA with a superbly devilish pump clip, and ales from Wiper and True and Tiny Rebel.
Not a bad selection, plus there were German beers and craft options on the kegs should the cask not take your fancy.

This was an incredible building to end our Nottingham trip in, remarkably quiet on a busy evening in town when the crowds were packing themselves into the much less remarkable 'Spoons just across the road.