Pub 14, Day 3 – The Washington

By Rob

We headed into town that night, after having sufficiently pre-drank and walked off the resultant calories. Before going to the usual haunts, we figured we could tick one final pub off. As such, we went to The Washington.

It was a pretty weird place inside. Despite definitely being a pub, it was almost nothing like one. Or at least, 50% of it looked nothing like one. The left-hand side was fairly standard, with a bar and seating. The other half, however, contained a dancefloor area that looked rather like a converted garage. On one side of the pub, people were sat on bar stools, sipping pints of beer, while just six feet away students were flinging themselves around with their vodka mixers to the thump, thump, thump of not-very-pub-like music.

We each ordered a pint of Moonshine, a popular pale ale from Abbeydale Brewery. I'm not the world's biggest pale ale fan, as I tend to prefer slightly darker beers, but I've always been partial to a pint of Moonshine, which I think is testament to the beer's light taste and its immense drinkability (Shakespeare made up his own words, so why can't I?). Sipping our pints, we crossed the Pub-Nightclub Parallel  – the invisible dividing line that separated the two halves of The Washington – and stepped into the bizarre garage dance hall. 

Sitting with his back against the wall, amidst all the music and grooving, was COWBOY KEITH! Our enigmatic friend with the wide-brimmed hat was nursing a Guinness and looking as sharp as ever. The Washington, it transpired, was a favourite of his.

It also transpired that Cowboy Keith is not actually a cowboy, but is in fact a dental support worker. After some discussion, we all agreed that Dental Support Worker Keith didn't quite have the same ring to it. He suggested that we could just call him Keith, which we explained was an even more ridiculous idea. We settled on Cowboy Keith.

Pub: The Washington (79 Fitzwilliam Street, S1 4JP)

Rating: 7/10

Pint: Moonshine  

Brewery: Abbeydale Brewery (Sheffield)

NEXT UP: The winner takes it all, at Nottingham House... 

Pub 13, Day 3 – The Foxwood

By Rob 

As a couple of other pubs were shut, this was the last one on the walk. As far as pubs were concerned, the journey had been a minimal success. However in terms of our fitness and well-being, I personally felt justified in not needing to exercise again for the month.

Our final venue provided a unique set-up for the suburbs: it was half-pub-half-nightclub.

Facing the road is The Embassy (club), while hidden round the back is The Foxwood (pub). Together they form a bizarre joint venture – although the strangest part of all is that the locals love it. The two venues often put on complementary nights (e.g. 80s-night in The Foxwood, 90s-night in The Embassy), and on particularly busy evenings they pull up the partition completely and offer the dancefloor to ravers and pub-dwellers alike.

On our visit the partition was in place, rendering The Foxwood a disappointment. There were few drinks to choose from, so we selected a pint of Caffrey's.

While there's little for me to say about The Foxwood, its business partner is a much livelier proposition. The Embassy is not your typical nightclub: it's quite small, it's only open on a Friday night, and it's not even remotely near town. Whereas The Ball Inn lacked the danger that its reputation had suggested, The Embassy certainly does not.

I've been into The Embassy on two occasions. The first time I went in there with a couple of friends, Andy and Danny (who makes a guest appearance at the Sheffield Tap). I can't remember if we went there to be ironic, or if we genuinely thought it might be OK – perhaps town seemed too far to travel that night. An hour into the experience, tired of treading on broken glass and watching the bouncers drag people outside, we opted to leave.

The second occasion was much worse. Firstly, I was in there with my parents. Again, I'm not sure what perverse lunacy had led me to think it might be a good idea. This time we lasted about half an hour. I went into the loos and came up against a group of lads quite casually enjoying a cheeky little bit of crack. A few threats were thrown at me, and I decided that maybe I wasn't quite so desperate for the toilet as I first thought. The only problem was that my body, my bladder in particular, disagreed with this assessment of affairs. So I nipped outside, did what I had to do, and then came back in. I think it's fair to say that when you have to leave the venue for a wee in order to avoid getting stabbed, it's probably not the place you want to spend your evening. I pulled my parents away before they thought to hit the dancefloor.

Anyway, back to The Foxwood. It got 5/10, if only for being nothing like The Embassy.

Pub: The Foxwood (57 Mansfield Road, S12 2AG)

Rating: 5/10

Pint: Caffrey's Irish Ale 

Brewery: Molson Coors Brewing Company (Burton-upon-Trent)

NEXT UP: A cowboy in Washington 

Pub 12, Day 3 – The Ball Inn

By Rob

The walk between Barry's and The Ball Inn is a pretty lengthy one. It requires those involved to walk up the tragically steep Granville Road and then traverse the equally steep and yet much longer stretch of hill that is City Road, finally coming out at Manor Top. Unbelievably, this trek of several miles goes past no pubs. It wasn't until heading down the other side of Manor Top that we came to such a place.

A DeLorean we passed along the way

I'd never been in The Ball Inn, but I'd only heard bad things about it. Inside, the place was hardly The Ritz, but considering that most of the negative stories related to stabbings, shootings and other violent causes of death, I had to admit I was pleasantly surprised by how little we were attacked.

Sadly, the pub was overwhelmingly nondescript and just a little too dark. The range of drinks on offer was, unsurprisingly, very limited. Gritting our teeth at the prospect of having to tick off a common beer so early in the journey, we each ordered a pint of Tetley's Cask. Fortunately, the Cask proved to be a nice beer – with a fuller flavour than the more common Smooth Flow – and we left feeling mildly refreshed.

While in the pub, the majority of our time was spent trying to figure out whether or not the barmaid was somebody we'd known back in our schooldays. Squinting across the shaded premises, I wasn't so sure. Andy, on the other hand, was confident that we were looking at the real deal and, as such, wanted to go over and say hello. My mind flashed back to a time when, during the 'famous faces' round of a pub quiz, Andy was convinced that the young black man before us was, in fact, Paul Daniels (the ageing, very much Caucasian magician). Knowing how poor my compatriot's powers of facial recognition were, I managed to dissuade him from making what would have surely been a grave social error. 

Pub: The Ball Inn (43 Mansfield Road, S12 2AG)

Rating: 4.5/10

Pint: Tetley's Cask

Brewery: Carlsberg Group (Northampton)

NEXT UP: Drugs and dancefloors, at The Foxwood...

Pub 11, Day 3 – Barry's [The Return]

By Rob

As the first blog detailed, Barry's had been an interesting experience. Andy's weird, impromptu handjob from a mentalist had caused him to forget to finish his drink. The rules being what they are, we had no choice but to revisit and finish a pint.

Barry's is not a great looking place. It looks no better in the daylight. We ordered two pints of Red Stripe, but something was amiss with the pumps and we ended up with two pints of snakebite. As two people who cannot stand cider, and yet who didn't want to upset poor old Barry, we sat and winced our way through these drinks.

Upon request, Barry brought out two plates of mutton and rice. It was delicious, even managing to make me forget the taste of Strongbow/piss that was stuck to my tongue. This time both drinks were finished, alongside two plates of food, and poor Andy left Barry's without even so much as a hint of a handjob this time.

Pub: Barry's (96-98 London Road, S2 4LR)

Rating: 10/10

Pint: Red Stripe

Brewery: Desnoes & Geddes (Kingston, Jamaica)

NEXT UP: Time-machines and magicians, at The Ball Inn...

Pub 10, Day 3 – The Place

By Rob

Here's a riddle. What looks like a Wetherspoons, sounds like a Wetherspoons, feels like a Wetherspoons and yet is not, in fact, a Wetherspoons? The answer is The Place.

I have no idea if this pub is part of a chain or whether the landlord just decided that he really loved Wetherspoons, but the similarity is startling. That being said, the place was fine! A pint of Jaipur was ordered and, still only thirty feet away from my flat's front door, we contemplated how many pubs we would find along the walk.

Wetherspoons The Place gets 6/10.

Pub: The Place (Nile Street, S10 2PN)

Rating: 6/10

Pint: Jaipur

Brewery: Thornbridge Brewery (Bakewell)

NEXT UP: Finishing off what we started, at Barry's...

Pub 9, Day 3 – Fox & Duck

By Rob

A Bit of a Pause...

Now, it's definitely fair to say that there has been a bit of a break between this blog and the last one. A break of about a year, to be exact. The sad fact is that Andy, for paltry reasons like his job and life prospects, moved away from Sheffield. As such, the whole thing hit a bit of a slow-down.

However, Pubquest is back in action and, admittedly on my part, there has been a little laziness in play. There are some posts that have sat in My Documents, covered in digital dust and waiting to be uploaded. Posts such as this little treat for instance!

***

At this time I lived in a small, two-bedroom flat in Broomhill. I was blessed that day with a visit from Andy and, after a brief discussion, we came up with a special session of Pubquest. You see, we were worried that since Pubquest required us to drink somewhere in the region of five hundred pints, it was a near-inevitability that we would get a little fat in the process. Of course, five hundred pints of beer come replete with other, arguably more serious, health concerns that we didn't really dwell on. It says a lot about our priorities at the time that we were primarily troubled over the prospect of a beer belly.

As such, we made the decision to walk from my flat in Broomhill to my parent's house, visiting every pub we found en route. This, we had cleverly deduced, would burn off the calories that we consumed from the drinks. The walk was about five miles, hardly a marathon, but given that a great deal of it was uphill we certainly felt that it was a clever move. 

The first pub, the Fox & Duck, looked very much like an old man's drinking den that was, strangely, a place owned by Sheffield Students' Union. We ordered a pint of Broadside, which was a decidedly average pint. The pub's "bring your own food" policy makes it a perfect spot for cash-strapped students, who can just nip across to one of the many local takeaways and enjoy their food in the reasonable comfort of a not unpleasant establishment.

Pub: Fox & Duck (223-227 Fulwood Road, S10 3BA)

Rating: 6.5/10

Beer: Broadside

Brewery: Adnams (Southwold, Suffolk)

NEXT UP: A riddle to solve, at The Place...