The 2025 CAMRA Good Beer Guide was published a few days ago, bringing with it joy to those had been included, particularly for the first time. The day after publication I visited one such place and then called in a former Guide regular only a couple of miles away that had failed to make the cut once again this time....
Pecket Well is a small village situated on the edge of the Pennine moors a couple of miles out of Hebden Bridge. To get there I turned off the main A646 Calder Valley road as I arrived in the town and then took the A6033 up the hill towards Oxenhope. Houses, some of them over-and-under-dwellings, a feature of this part of the world where flat land is at a premium, were perched on corners at crazy angles and clung to the side of the road for dear life as I began to leave the town behind. Following a twisty and vertiginous climb through dense woodland the road eventually emerged into the open at the fringes of the tree line as the slope began to lessen. Here I came to a welcoming looking pub situated on a gentle corner.
I had arrived at the Robin Hood Inn, a long-established pub that had just been included in the CAMRA Good Beer Guide for the first time, certainly as far as I can remember. I turned into a large car park at the side of the pub, with a beer garden alongside, from where there are far reaching views over the valley of Crimsworth Dean to the distant hills beyond whilst, beyond the pub, solid stone cottages, a chapel, and a mill huddle together as if to keep out the sharp winds that sweep in from across the rolling moors.
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| Pecket Well, West Yorkshire |
The Robin Hood is a solid stone building that has been a pub for many years, quite when it was built I am not sure, but the first mention I could find was that it was acquired by Halifax brewers Thomas Ramsden in 1892. They were subsequently taken over by Joshua Tetley and Sons, and that is how I remember the pub when I had driven past over the years, never tempting me to call in. Now a free house, this was therefore my first visit. I walked in, there was a room to the right, whilst the bar was straight in front of me. A couple of guys and a couple of large dogs, who turned out not to be with their owners, blocked my way through to the bar, though they politely moved out of my way. Then the guys followed suit and I could see what was on the bar. 4 hand pumps, dispensing the locally-brewed Taylors Landlord, the regularly-seen Farmers Blonde, the not-often seen Entire Stout from lightning Wiltshire brewers Hop Back, and a first-time for me Hopadelic from the expanding Surrey brewers, By The Horns. So not a selection you're going to see on many bars.
A group of young bar staff were chatting as a slightly older lady was taking a booking, but they all stopped, smiled, and looked my way as I got ready to order my beer. One of the young girls poured me a pint of the Hopadelic, which was on special offer at £3.50 a pint, which was a good start, and I sat down to drink it at a small table across from the bar. The place was busy, with one end of the room occupied by a group generally to the north of middle age who were chatting away over their Friday teatime drinks. The two dogs that had greeted me on my arrival were sat on the floor in front of them, with at least a couple of others, all seemingly content at their owners' choice of pub as they all dozed, an eye opening every now and again to check on proceedings. I took a sip of my pint of Hopadelic. This 4.3% session pale ale was in fine form, hoptastic and a real hop monster with no less than 6 hops in the mix, but well-balanced and refreshing too! Definitely worth a NBSS 3.5 rating, I thought. A couple with a little dog walked in which invited a chorus from the corner, but they soon settled down, and when they took their drinks to a table near me, they had all returned to dozing. I went back to the bar, this time coming back with a half of Farmers Blonde, which had cost £2.25, so £4.50 a pint, which to be honest was more what I was expecting. It was pretty good (NBSS 3), but I did prefer my first beer.
I really enjoyed the Robin Hood. It was clear that this is popular with the local community, people coming in being greeted by name, yet it attracts visitors from further afield to its restaurant and to stay over in a number of rooms. The staff were polite and friendly, and made me feel very welcome. The beer was very good too, and I look forward to going over there again. If you are in the area, it is definitely one to visit - and your dog will be made welcome too!
Pecket Well comes under Wadsworth Parish Council, which covers this part of the hills above Hebden Bridge. Within the parish is the village of Old Town, on whose edge is the next pub I visited. Old Town is a large village which is home to over a thousand souls, with a village green, a thriving community centre, a cricket club, a couple of chapels, and a post office-cum-cafe. But in a grim episode in its past it was home to the now-infamous Acre Mill, owned by Cape Insulation, which opened in 1939 to meet the Second World War demand for gas mask filters. Unfortunately the filters included blue asbestos, whose dust is highly dangerous. After the war, when gas mask demand had declined, the company diversified into other asbestos products until the mill closed in 1970. A subsequent World in Action investigation revealed that the factory had broken the law regarding asbestos dust control between 1940 and 1970. By 1979, when the mill was demolished, 12% out of 2,200 former employees had an asbestos-related disease, with further cases emerging over subsequent years, some in the wider community as asbestos waste had been dumped at a number of sites in the area.
It was a few minutes' drive to the other pub I had planned to visit, the Hare and Hounds, a Taylors tied house, one of two they have in Calderdale, the other being the Crossroads at Wainstalls. The building, which was probably farm cottages originally, is over 400 years old, and has been a pub since the 1840's, serving the local community and, more recently, visitors from further afield. The pub is known locally as the Lane Ends, and was at one time a shoo-in for the Good Beer Guide, although it hasn't featured in it since 2020. It was about two and half years since I'd been and last time I had raved about the pint of Boltmaker I'd had "I couldn't fault the quality of the beer....it was excellent and I rated it a very rare NBSS 4.5 and probably the best pint of cask I have had all year. However, at £4.60 a pint it needed to be!"
I parked the car just down the road below the pub, walked up via the cobbled path outside, and opened the door and I was straight into the main room, with the bar on the right hand side. There is a room to the left as you enter, a further seating area facing the bar, and a further area beyond the bar. A few people were sat in the front bit where a fire was lit, with a group of twenty-somethings noisily enjoying a drink, not their first going by the number of empty glasses on the table in front of them. A couple of lads were at the bar ordering drinks from a blonde haired lass, who it seemed was doing everything on her own. When it was my turn, I decided to go for a pint of Knowle Spring Blonde, remembering the beer had been very good last time. That'll be £5.60. £5.60 for a 4.2% beer in a pub only a few miles from the brewery!!! I couldn't believe my ears, and then, having meekly paid and found an empty table, which wasn't difficult as the place wasn't particularly busy, the beer was at best indifferent, thin and lacking any body (NBSS 2.5). Looking around the pub with its ill-matched decor, almost a pastiche of how a country pub should look, it struck me that it is catering for people who come from miles away to eat and stay who probably don't care how much their pint is, and is trading on its past reputation. And when I compared the flat and empty ambience here to the warm and welcoming atmosphere I'd left at the Robin Hood, it is easy to see why that was full of locals, and based on the evening's beer, why the former is deservedly in the Good Beer Guide.
A few other things I've picked out from the new Good Beer Guide, which comes this year with a cover featuring one of two pubs well-known to millions across the country, even if they are not regular pub-goers themselves. They are in fact not real pubs, but ones associated with two of our longest-running TV soap operas. The default version features the Rovers Return, from Coronation Street, whilst an alternative version features the Woolpack from Emmerdale. The format has gone back to listing pubs by their counties in alphabetical order rather than by region, whilst the breweries have returned to their own section rather than being listed in with the pubs in their counties. All of which makes it a lot easier to navigate than it has been over the past couple of years.
The Robin Hood is around 14 miles from where I live but until my visit there, it wasn't the nearest pub in the new Guide to me that I had never been in before. The nearest are a mere 4 miles away in the Bradford suburb of Wibsey, the Dog & Gun and Hoopers, both long-standing entries but which I've always thought I'll save for a rainy day, whenever that is. Another is the Rising Sun at Norristhorpe in the depths of the Heavy Woollen district, which is a bit out on its own and therefore doesn't lend itself to incorporating into a tour with other pubs. Interestingly, amongst the new entries is the first new pub to join the select few in Bradford city centre, the Lord Clyde, which has been so far under the radar that I can't recall it ever being given more than a cursory mention in the local CAMRA magazine. Another new entry is the Mill Valley Brewery Tap in Cleckheaton, which is doable by bus, during the day at least, and does give the opportunity to try beers rarely seen on this side of the hill. One pub that I am pleased to see back in the Guide after an absence of several years is the Shoulder of Mutton at Lockwood, a former Guide regular in the suburbs of Huddersfield. With a historic interior and a good selection of beers from the likes of Abbeydale and Saltaire, this back-street pub is well-worth a visit.
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| The Junction, Otley; back in the 2025 Good Beer Guide |
Thumbing through the Guide, I spotted a number of places that I have been to previously that look worth a repeat visit. Whitby now has a total of 8 pubs in the Guide, Barnsley is up to 6, and Otley has a couple of new ones amongst its 5 entries. Across the Pennines, Chorley is up to 8 pubs whilst Preston has a total of 13. Liverpool is up to 20, including some new ones that I've not been in despite 3 recent visits. Meanwhile in Newcastle, in this year's listings there are no pubs I have not visited before, but it is great to see two of the city's finest pubs, the Bacchus and the Bodega, both back in for the first time for a few years. Manchester and Leeds are pretty much as they were, whilst places I could be tempted to visit in the coming 12 months about which I have never blogged include Lincoln, St Helens, Cambridge, and Norwich, where there are a total of 33 pubs listed in the Guide!
Of course, being a book, the Good Beer Guide can only be a snapshot of pubs as they were at a point in time, ie. around 6 months prior to publication, and so of course things can change, pubs can change hands or close, whilst new places can come along. So I tend to use CAMRA's online guide WhatPub? (now being updated to CAMRA Experience) which, not being restricted by print deadlines, can reflect recent changes and also gives details on other places in the area. So if I'm planning a trip I use the Guide as a starting point and then check online for additional suggestions. But even then there is no substitute for the rare occasion when you stumble across some absolute cracker off your own bat!
And so on that note, a-wandering I shall go!
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