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Travel & Lifestyle

Pints of View Summer 2026

By Kirsten Yates

Pints of View Summer 2026 - the branch magazine of Mansfield & Ashfield CAMRA.

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Published
May 18, 2026
Pages
36

More in this magazine

  • Mansfield and AshfieldPints of View The branch magazine of Mansfield and Ashfield CAMRA Issue 11 - Summer 2026 Edition
  • Page 2REAL ALE - CRAFT BEER - ARTISAN SPIRITS - FINE WINES LIVE MUSIC EVERY WEEK THE BROWN
  • Page 3f ل
  • View From The Chair(s)Hello, and welcome to our Summer 2026 edition of Pints of View... I've had only limited involvement in the branch so far this year due to ill health, and haven't even had a beer since January 25th (when I had to abandon the #31PubsInJanuary challenge), as I then spent the next 8 weeks in hospital. My thanks, therefore, go to fellow committee members for stepping up and taking on extra responsibilities in my absence. I'll therefore leave it to my Vice-Chair to complete the rest of this piece, but I wanted to mention just a few points first.
  • Page 5As well as getting a printed magazine back into our pubs, the committee would still very much like to bring back a Mansfield and Ashfield Branch Beer Festival. It's our top priority, and there is work going on behind the scenes. However, as I mentioned earlier, we're a small team of volunteers, doing whatever we can along with our work/home/family commitments. Again, if you think you can help us with any of this, including getting a beer festival up and running, please do get in touch. Looking forward, we have our Annual General Meeting on Sunday 28th June at 2pm at The Brown Cow in Mansfield. We've booked The Cow Shed (the upstairs room) for this. At the meeting, all committee posts will be up for re-election. Again, our AGM is open to all, and we'd love to have the place full of people. If you're interested, do come along - you won't be forced to sign up to anything, and you can just come along to meet us, have a beer, and see what happens. Equally, if you would like to become involved, either formally or informally ('minister without portfolio' is still an option!), we would really appreciate a few more people helping with our committee roles - and if you're interested in real cider, you could even consider taking the Cider Rep role from me!
  • Branch NewsPub of the Season nominations... PUB OF T
  • Page 724 Branch Diary
  • Horse & JockeyFree House Fine Selection of Traditional Ales Est 1664
  • Page 9IRA CAMRA
  • Branch Pub of the YearBranch Pub of the Year 2026 CAMRA
  • Stagecoach 1 RouteAhead of 'Better Transport Week' in June, I thought it was time another guide was added to the website's Bus Routes page. Thinking, 'Where better to start than from my nearest bus stop in Huthwaite', I caught the Stagecoach 1 to Mansfield Woodhouse and worked my way home, with an open ticket costing £7, allowing unlimited travel for the day. My rules for the trip were that the pub must serve real ale and be no more than 30 seconds from the bus stop. This is how it went... BARREL MICROPUB
  • Stagecoach 1 RouteWoodfordes Nog complementing Batemans Eggs-B and a brace from Full Mash in Shoreline and Illuminati - the latter of which I had to look up, as it was hard to tell from the pump clip. There seemed to be a party of some kind going on, so I retired to one of the front rooms where I could read a CAMRA branch magazine I hadn't seen before while enjoying my ale. Bold Forester
  • PUB OF THSEASON Winter 2025/26 Town Pub of the Season
  • PUB OF TSEASON Winter 2025/26 Village Pub of the Season
  • MICROPUBMARKET T TAVERN
  • Social Round-upOur first social event of the year took place at the 2025 Branch Pub of the Year, FireRock. A good turnout from committee and branch members was bolstered by guests from Amber Valley branch, making for a convivial and cosy winter afternoon.
  • Mo d treetSocial Round-up The Talbot
  • Page 19I TOM SAID
  • Out and about inn... WarehamSt. Martins Church The Purbeck area of Dorset has been our go-to place for nearly 20 years, and at the 'Gateway to the Purbecks' is the Saxon town of Wareham.
  • Page 212. Out and about inn... Wareham
  • Opinion"There's no room for complacency" - they were the wise words of CAMRA's national chairman Joe Goodwin when he addressed annual meetings in the 1970s. He stressed that while the Campaign could record many successes, the battle to save real ale was far from over. Today, as we celebrate CAMRA's 55th anniversary, Joe's mantra is as true as ever. We can indeed look back with pride on our undoubted achievements but we face an even more daunting battle to save and promote this country's unique contribution to the world of beer.
  • OpinionIn Yorkshire, Theakston, which will celebrate 200 years of brewing in 2027, says it had its best year ever in 2025. In the same county, Timothy Taylor says it's brewing more cask beer than before the Covid pandemic. It's not exactly a micro - it brews 70,000 barrels a year of which 80 per cent is cask, with Landlord leading the field. Across the Pennines, Robinsons family brewery in Stockport has built a new plant to supply cask beer to its 300 pubs. In Derbyshire, Thornbridge also reports a strong surge for its cask beers, some of which are brewed in a Burton union fermenter, that was surplus to requirements at Marston's.
  • Page 24Brook Two Blokes, a Dog, and 26 Letters - G
  • Page 25Brook Two Blokes, a Dog, and 26 Letters - G
  • Page 26Brook Two Blokes, a Dog, and 26 Letters - G
  • Favourite PubsYou may or may not have heard of the ‘Famous Five'. No, not Enid Blyton's band of child sleuths (though there is a connection here), but the five pubs which have been in every edition of the Good Beer Guide... My favourite pub happens to be one of those, but it is its location and individuality that never fails to put a smile on my face. The pub was introduced to me by my brother-in-law on my first holiday in Dorset - not just as a place to go for a drink, but somewhere to experience - that's quite a thing in an area boasting Corfe Castle, Lulworth Cove, Durdle Door, Tyneham and much more.
  • UnusuAleHighlighting unusual, rare or one-off ales and the pubs that serve them... AL STOUT
  • THE DIXIES ARMSSCHOOLROAD BAGTHORPE NG16 5HF EINE ALES, A GREAT SELECTION OF TRADITIONAL CIDER PRIVATE WHISKY LOUNGE
  • Trail and Ale with DuggieA regular feature highlighting a dog-friendly pub, in or around our branch, with a good walk from the door and great beer at the end. The branch has an abundance of scenic countryside with Sherwood Forest, The Dukeries and Robin Hood Way, to name a few of the highlights. Nothing beats a nice pint at the end of a good walk, so lace up your boots and enjoy what our branch has to offer. The Beehive, Maplebeck, and east of the branch
  • Page 32A631 From the Archives - Good Beer Guide 2000
  • Page 33SOUTH A631
  • Page 34A631 From the Archives - Good Beer Guide 2000
  • Aither Brewery12 Mill Way Old Mill Lane Industrial Estate, Mansfield Woodhouse, NG19 9BG 07703828594
  • Page 36Give a gift membership to the beer lover in your life! Pubs, Pints, People.
Text of this page

Brook

Two Blokes, a Dog, and 26 Letters - G

We're now getting into the spirit of our alphabet of pub crawls. So far, we've completed the letters A, B, C, D and N. We managed to find a date for our next adventure, and our initial thought was to try to keep it in alphabetical order, exploring options for our letter E. Having thoroughly enjoyed one of our CAMRA monthly Branch Socials in Eastwood, this was our first plan. However, for a couple of reasons - but mainly the opening hours of some of the pubs on our intended route - we decided to go away from alphabetical order and visit Grantham to get our letter G.

House astle

Neither of us had spent any time in Grantham previously, so some research was required. Once again, we used the CAMRA website to search the area for likely the pubs had to serve real ale and be dog-friendly.

pubs, setting the criteria that the pubs ha

Grantham

I would be travelling from Mansfield, and Adam (along with his dog, Toby) would be travelling from Arnold. The easiest option for us was to meet at Nottingham Train Station and then take the Norwich train to Grantham, which only takes about thirty minutes.

iars

The best and cheapest option for me was to was also nice to be able to purchase an River

NB greet

Street an off-peak return train ticket from Mansfield to Grantham. It return' so that I didn't have to think too much about which train I needed to be back for. The off-peak journey into Nottingham was fairly quiet, and I had a great welcome at the station, as Toby tried his best to drag Adam down the platform in his rush greet me!

George Street

We caught the 10:37 train from Nottingham, and it left exactly on time ebri

Whistle

Step the er arriving in Grantham at around 11:10. We didn't have far to go for our first port ng of call, it's situated on the station platform! It's a micropub called The Whistle Stop, which opened in 2019, situated inside the former parcels office on Platform 1. You can access the pub from either the platform or from road. There is some outside seating on both sides of the pub, too. As I mentioned previously, we do check beforehand that the pub is dog-friendly, but we also think it's only right to ask when we arrive, just in case there are certain areas they don't allow dogs. On asking, we had to chuckle; they couldn't have been more dog-friendly, making sure that Toby had a drink and a few doggy treats from the bar, b

Whistle Stop

Sefore serving us!

They've got three sticks on the bar and always k: Street eroantham. On the day one permanent beer and two changing. The permanent one is called Whistle Stop and is brewed for the pub by Z Zest Brewery, a local brewery based in we visited, the two guest ales were Newton's also from Zest, and Diplomat from Beermats. It's always nice to see one of our local breweries when we're out and about in different areas. As neither of us had sampled anything from Zest before, Adam went for the Whistle Stop, which is a pale ale, and I went for the Newton's Drop, a best bitter. This wasn't going to be the last reminder we had of Isaac Newton's prominence in the town! They were two very good beers, and we were off to a good start. We then had walk into the town centre to reach our second pub.

Whistle Stop interior about a ten-minute w reet

As we strolled into the town centre, Sir Isaac Newton's influence became apparent. He was born at Woolsthorpe Manor, which is about ten miles from Grantham, and he was educated at The King's School in Grantham. We walked past the Isaac Newton shopping centre and his statue, which is located just outside the guildhall. We also discovered that there's a Primary School named after him and there used to be a pub named after him too. I rawas pleased that I'd in the cultural theme by having an ale called

Angel and Royal

24 | Pints of View Summer 2026

  • Launder Terra
  • Newton's Drop!
  • The Whistle
  • Stop
  • Station Road East
  • Road