{"id":2843,"date":"2022-07-25T16:28:52","date_gmt":"2022-07-25T16:28:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/?p=2843"},"modified":"2022-07-25T16:28:53","modified_gmt":"2022-07-25T16:28:53","slug":"a-trip-to-south-hertfordshire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/2022\/07\/25\/a-trip-to-south-hertfordshire\/","title":{"rendered":"A trip to South Hertfordshire"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

One sunny Saturday in May, twelve members of CAMRA\u2019s Enfield & Barnet branch set out on a minibus crawl of village pubs in South Hertfordshire, thanks to the organisation and planning of Tricia and Brian, our Treasurer. We met at Ye Olde Mitre in Barnet at mid-day although, sadly, there was no time for a pre-trip pint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our first stop was the Strathmore Arms, St Paul\u2019s Walden (SG4 8BT). A few locals were gathered around the bar but, as the weather was good, we ventured outside and had the large garden to ourselves. A traditional rural free house, the building was originally built in 1838 as a house for Charlotte Bowes-Lyon (Lady Glamis), whose great-great grand-daughter Elizabeth has just celebrated her Platinum Jubilee as our Queen! Ales being served were from Tring, New River, Ampthill and Oxford breweries. All went down well with the group, my favourite being the Oxford Shotover Trinity, which was in excellent condition.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The Strathmore Arms<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Next we proceeded to the Red Lion, Preston (SG4 7UD) and a ten minute drive away. It was busy pub, again with large garden where many customers were enjoying the lunchtime food. A former Whitbread pub, in 1982 the Red Lion became the first community-owned pub in Great Britain; a story which made the pages of the Daily Mail and was featured on BBC TV\u2019s Nationwide! It has since been a multiple CAMRA award winner and was a National Pub of the Year finalist in 2019. New River, Tring and Ampthill again featured plus TT Landlord and Oakham Citra. The Citra was good quality but soon replaced by Kaizen (also from Oakham) which was even better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our third stop, and the only micropub on our itinerary, was The Local in Markyate (AL3 8PA), a two-roomed venue which opened in March 2016. Special thanks must go to the proprietor, Martin, who opened earlier than his advertised hours to enable us to include it on our tour. Along with a great selection of ales, Martin has a fridge containing a fantastic selection of local and continental bottled beers. Martin was serving eight ales on gravity with two apiece from Tring, Vale, Leighton Buzzard and Chiltern breweries. The group particularly enjoyed the darker beers, Chiltern Black and Leighton Buzzard Earthquake Oatmeal Stout. The photo shows the full group, except for Keith who is taking the photo. Martin is on the right.<\/p>\n\n\n

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After what seemed a strange detour by the driver, our final venue was the Woodman at Wild Hill (AL9 6EA), a stalwart of many GBG editions. The pub closed in the early 1960s but a public petition was raised to reopen it \u2018for the benefit of our village\u2019 and it reopened as a free house in 1964. The signatures from this petition (including that of romantic novelist Barbara Cartland) are still on display inside. As well as the two Greene King ales (Abbot and IPA), Landlord, XT 8 and Crouch Vale Godiva were available.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Outside the Woodman<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Across the four pubs, we saw a total of 21 different cask beers from 11 breweries. After a highly enjoyable afternoon, we arrived back at Ye Olde Mitre around 6.30 where most of us enjoyed a final pint or two.
Mike Hodgkinson<\/em><\/strong>
Editor\u2019s note: Mike has asked me to acknowledge that the pubs\u2019 websites were the source of some of his information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One sunny Saturday in May, twelve members of CAMRA\u2019s Enfield & Barnet branch set out on a minibus crawl of village pubs in South Hertfordshire, thanks to the organisation and… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2845,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pub-crawl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2843"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2843\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2847,"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2843\/revisions\/2847"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}