The Portland Street pedestrians have completed their winter programme, apart from the final stroll, where we play away. Northallerton, this year. Missed a few outings, but there were some highlights and lowlights to record on the ones I managed.
Lowlights first. As ever, the Groves have little to recommend them, both the Independent and the Castle Howard Ox seeming to find customers quite a surprise, not quite sure what to do with them, and how do you keep this beer stuff anyway ? Over on North Street, the First Hussar, if that’s what it’s currently called, had installed a huge shiny chrome dispenser of fizzy lagers in its back bar, though real beer could be brought through from the front. I hadn’t been in the King’s Arms for about 20 years, and shan’t do so again until old age has made me forget how awful it is. The Fox on Holgate Road used to be quite smart, just after its redesignation as a heritage pub, but it badly needs refurbishing again.
Highlights ? Well, I had the best pint of the season in the Bay Horse on Blossom Street, Deuchars, but somehow even better there than it usually is. The Maltings is always worth a visit , though I’ve known comfier seating. Bizarrely, we found the Three Cranes a real treat — a few dedicated elderly locals shifting their pints — just a cosy sort of spot, and with the sort of 60s music you could sing along to as you were leaving. So different from the Hansom CAb where most of us were 40 years older than most of them.
Thursday night is hazardous — it’s a popular one for pub quizzes. We escaped from the Brigadier Gerard just in time but hit the one at the Trafalgar Bay fair and square. As it turned out, we would have won it if we had entered.
And we finished, washed up and weary, in the York Arms, with a coal fire on a warm evening — we just couldn’t summon the energy to cross the road to the Three Legged Mare.
So we’ll have to start there next year !
