23/09/22 - The Good Beer Guide Pubs of Matlock

Pubs - 4 

Good Beer Guide Ticks - #707 - 710

Having walked 1775ft up High Tor, High Junction Peak and the Heights of Abraham, the uphill schlep to the Thorn Tree Inn is the last thing one needs. Matlock is that sort of town. If you are not going up, you are going down.

Initial disappointment that it is a Greene King pub quickly evaporated.  Two absolute classics on cask - Landlord and Proper Job, good community banter and views across the Derwent Valley, allowing me to assess what was previously conquered on foot.

Greene King on a Hill

All that choice, and the bar hangers go Carling

Fine views - both of Landlord and Riber Castle

Solo drinking eavesdropping.  Good to hear talk of "Dead Man's Shoes".  This Paddy Considine revenge thriller is the main reason I am here.  Inadvertently, like some kind of fan-boy, I am wearing a near identical military style jacket to his characters.  

Downhill, following the crowds to Farmacy. Its busy inside and out, with a very drunken man in a cap and sliders is taking it on himself to apologise to every patron and then offering them a drink.  I'd just got my own - not knowing about Aldwark Artisasn Ales for which they are a tap room and selecting an ABK Helles.  I never found out what he was apologising for, but he was refused service to fulfill his offer to others.

Slider-Man relaxing outside after offering strangers drinks

MicroPub Action

Next on the list is just over the road.  If Farmarcy is a micro converted from a chemists, you can guess what the Newsroom used to be.

Former news-agency at night

More appealing inside

Part Micro, part off-licence, as you can see from the shelves.

On the chalkboard, the New Bristol Brewery, Twice Upon a Time IPA took my fancy. Coming in at a whopping 8.5%, I decided to go conservative with a 2/3rds.  I am in a micro, after all.  Normal rules do not apply.  

The barman was having a froth related disaster. I knew he was in trouble when the big spoon came out and by the time I got to a quiet table, the liquid was just up to the half line mark on the glass.  But what a delicious half it was. I was straight back up and thinking I would be short changed again, went for a full pint.  I wasn't.

Which probably explains the reason for my lack of memory of the final micro of the night, Twenty Ten.

Answers on a post card as to what this shop used to be

Not much going on...  England were in the final stages of being beaten again without scoring a goal from open play.  There was Deya Steady Rolling Man.  There nearly always is Deya Steady Rolling Man.

Your Twenty Ten Choices

A decent night work and great to see everywhere so busy.