One of the great things about The Drapers Arms is that we made friends there – the type who say: “Do you want to do a daytrip to Hereford?”
Jess had been to Hereford as a small child on a family holiday. She remembers the Mappa Mundi in the cathedral and that’s about it.
Ray had never been and his only point of reference was Robert De Niro yelling at Sean Bean in Ronin: “What’s the colour of the boathouse at Hearford!?”
It’s an interesting place – an historic cathedral city on the river Wye, with a few cute little streets and a general sense of being in the borderlands. Are you in the Midlands, the West Country, or Wales? We heard accents from all three while we were there and it’s also reflected in its drinking culture.
Our friends had drawn up an itinerary and we were pleased to see that the two pubs we’d identified as must-visits were also top of the organiser’s agenda.
(How had we identified them? By reviewing Retired Martin’s blog, obviously.)
The Barrels sent out all the right vibes immediately: wonky building, carpet in the bar, dartboard, red upholstered benches, and so on. The bar staff were passionate about, and proud of, their full range of Wye Valley beer. “Start at this end and work your way along, would be my advice,” said one regular. “Though you might need an ambulance to get home.”
We frequently see Butty Bach and HPA in Bristol but there were some beers here we hadn’t encountered ever, or for years. Bitter and Wholesome Stout grabbed our attention in particular. The former was nutty and almost like a light mild, the latter a delightful swirl of coffee and cream. It felt quite decadent at only 4.6%.
The prices were a pleasant change from Bristol too: £5.85 got us a pint and half of beer in excellent condition. And the seasonal special was being advertised at £3.90 a pint.
We were there just after opening time and there were already a few people getting settled. Most of them were drinking bitter as far as we could tell. We could have happily settled in for the afternoon but there were other places we needed to be.
We stopped for lunch at The Lichfield Vaults which also had a tempting old skool beer range, including Bass and Timothy Taylor Landlord. We had one of each. The Landlord was very good and the Bass was damn near perfect: cool, lively, intriguingly funky.
The Orange Tree is a Black Country Ales pub and perhaps has a wider role as embassy for the Black Country. The people behind the bar and half the customers had strong Midlands accents. There were Black Country Ales on the pumps and Kath’s homemade cobs in the chiller. (£3 and, as one of our companions kept saying, “bigger than my head”.)
We enjoyed Pig on the Wall, the Black Country Ales mild, as well as a great pint of Hopback Summer Lightning.
After that, we needed to sober up, and so went sightseeing while our party broke up to (a) go to a football match or (b) drink wine. We nosed around the cathedral, looked at a statue of Edward Elgar, regarded an old barn, climbed into the roof of a church to look at an obscene carving, and then pottered along the river.
As they day grew dimpsy we rendezvoused at Beer in Hand near the football ground. (Pictured at the top of this post.)
It looks and feels like a micropub, except it’s massive, and has a bunch of bottles, cans and keg beer. It’s another of those hybrids we identified here, we suppose.
We didn’t fancy the two cask ales, one of which was from Bristol, of course, and the keg beers seemed to mostly be hazy pales – which, again, we get plenty of at home.
So, we went for Helles Lager by Burnt Mill. We enjoyed it as an example of an English craft lager rather than a particularly authentic example of the style.
We should perhaps also point out that Herefordshire is also cider country. Most pubs had interesting cider available, often quite a range, and the town even has its own cider museum. But we’ll save that for another trip.
