In February, we wrote about the fraying tempers and stale beer to be found in Penzance out of season. Now the holidaymakers have arrived and both the atmosphere and the ale has become much livelier.
Even in the middle of the afternon, the Star Inn at Crowlas (our ‘pen portrait of which is in the latest edition of CAMRA’s BEER magazine) had a steady stream of visitors, mostly middle-aged couples who had paused in the middle of a long bike ride, walk or drive to try the fabled Potion 9. The Potion — always good — was at another level of brilliance.
In Penzance, the pubs near the railway station and the harbour seem permanently busy, filled with wealthy and healthy-looking visitors from Scandinavia, Germany, Australia and America. The Dock Inn was buzzing on our visit this week, and the Spingo was in tip-top condition.
At the Lamp & Whistle — perhaps more of a cosy winter pub than a summer haunt — we noticed that Orval had appeared alongside Duvel and Chimay in the fridges.
At the Yacht Inn on Thursday, the St Austell Proper Job IPA (which disappears in the depths of winter) was back and tasting superb — perhaps better than it has anywhere in the last six months or more.
After a thunderstorm on Friday night, which cleared the air, the pubs became even more crowded. The sounds of live rockabilly, laughter and chatter filled the street outside one pub; acoustic blues leaked from another. In lieu of any really convincing bars to pose in, lots of eighteen-year-olds were out and about, warming up for a night of clubbing with pear cider, lager and outrageous flirtation.
Yesterday, we rounded off the week with a mid-afternoon visit to the Blue Anchor in Helston. Some beers were better than others, and the crowd was different than in Penzance: older, more experienced drinkers, comparing notes on the health of their livers, symptoms of gout and whether mutual acquaintances were dead yet.
They were having a lot more fun than it might sound from that description.
5 replies on “Doing the Rounds”
Read the feature in Beer, which was great. However, my world came crashing down when I saw your first names in print for the first time. :-). Whither mystique?
Can’t write a book without first names, apparently, unless you’re Madonna or Saki.
“Saki Bailey”: it’s a pen-name and a cocktail.
Orval – Lots of discussion of brewed on and drink by date. They all seem to be rather “fresh” in the recent past so are they worth drinking yet?
We’ve never really got to grips with Orval, but did enjoy a couple of very young ones in the Lamp & Whistle this weekend. We had in mind the suggestion from someone that Orval might be the nearest a modern drinker can get to drinking a nineteenth-century British IPA, which probably helped us appreciate it more.