Sunday 24 December 2017

Pub 148, Day 55 – The Royal

By Rob

T’was the night before Christmas,
and we were all in the pub.

No, this isn’t the beginning of yet another spin on the classic rhyme (we did that already!). It was actually Christmas Eve and we were very much in the pub.

The pub in question was The Royal, in Woodhouse. We’d met up with a group of old school friends and, as always, seized an opportunity to infuse the evening with some Pubquest magic. We were all alumni of the late, great City School: a peerless educational establishment with leaking, creaking buildings, bottle green uniforms and terrible Ofsted reports. Although no longer in existence, it had once been the pride of Woodhouse – and so it was to Woodhouse we returned.[1]

I really liked The Royal. It wasn’t anything special, but it was traditional, warm, and friendly. Carpets and classic pub seating, no pointless and enormous empty space, and no stripped-back wooden floors – it was the perfect setting for Christmas Eve drinks.

Some of the locals had clearly been hitting the sauce. We had several exchanges with an extremely friendly old bloke who recurrently appeared throughout our stay, the details of which are lost to us on account of his dialect having been rendered unintelligible by a certain brewery in Tadcaster.

The beer range wasn’t amazing, but there were a couple of guest ales on. We each ordered a pint of Rocking Rudolph, a rather pleasant malty and fruity festive beer from Hardys & Hansons.

The reminiscing got underway, as did the drinking, and we polished off several more pints before departing on to the next place. Getting steadily wrecked on Christmas Eve might not sound very festive, but then consider that Father Christmas himself gets loaded on sherry and proceeds to drive all night.

Pub: The Royal (10 Market Square, S13 7JX)
Rating: 7/10
Brewery: Hardys & Hansons (Kimberly, Nottinghamshire) (no longer trading)

NEXT UP: Christmas morning, at The Stag...


[1] I imagine you’re wondering what sort of people two serial bloggers hung around with at school. Just imagine the coolest kids you can think of and then remove them from the scene entirely.

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