16/05/19 - Bathams Pub Walk - The Britannia, Upper Gornal

Distance - 4 Miles
Good Beer Guide Ticks - 383 and 384
Walk Inspiration - Best Pub Walks in the Black Country - Walk 18
Full list of Bathams Pub Walks

Regular blogfans will know that I am slowly recording a pub walk from all of the Bathams pubs.

Welcome to the first from 2019 and I'm hoping you will be as equally taken by the Gornals as I have been.   For I bring you not one great pub, but two - the other being a Holdens.

I think I will be looking at their tied houses for the next series of thematically linked ale rambles.

Lets start with the Gornals.   There's Upper, Lower and I have no idea where Dudley ends and Sedgley starts.   All I know is that there is some some genuine countryside to be found next to a fast food joint called "Kents Tuck Inn Fried Chicken".

I also know how fiercely proud the Black Country is.   After all, I am a baggies fan, still lamenting what could have been on Tuesday.

The Black Country Wellbeing Centre is not one of my two pub visits

Start at the Britannia on Kent Street for some road walking down Jews Lane, Robert Street and into Ruiton Street.   The occasional views through the houses are extraordinary.  From Upper Gornal - all my usual stomping grounds of Clent, Kinver Edge, Abberley Hill, the Malverns and the Cotswolds ridge are laid out before me. 

Photo does not do it justice

I've arrived at Ruiton Street and may as well get a bonus Good Beer Guide 2019 tick.

I know from my guide book that the Chapel House used to be known as the Miners Arms and was first registered as a pub in 1834.  Before that, it was a religious house used by a group of Methodists known as the Gornal Ranters.   A pub full of ranters.   Nothing changes.

Oldest Pub in Gornal

This pub ticking malarkey gets me crossing the threshold of many new pubs but I cannot think of an occasion that made me feel as welcome as this place.   Everyone said hello to me.  The landlord said hello twice.   It was full on an early evening Thursday.  Everything a pub should be.

And the beer.... unbelievably good Holdens Best Bitter that did not touch the sides.   Retired Martin was here a month ago.... he does words (and photos) better than me, so read his review.

On with the walking and into the wilds.  Don't follow my map route too closely, as there were a couple of dead ends but I found Turners Hill, made my way across a public footpath on a golf course called the Straits and before I knew it, arrived back to the Britannia.

Wilderness of Turners Hill

The Straits (not dire)

The pub has the corporate colours, the bulls head tiling, the old school charm that I've come to expect.   No point discussing the beer quality.   There's a reason why I want to be a Bathams Completist.

Two more to do.

Corporate Colours

Yet to master the clandestine art of pub photography