Aylsham Pub Day – Two Julians
After completing the pubs in North Walsham, Dereham and Bungay, it was time for Julian and I to turn our attention to completing the hospitality venues of Aylsham. After a moderately uncomfortable ride on a Sanders bus which didn’t seem in quite the condition it was likely once delivered to them in, we arrived safely in the beating heart of Aylsham and its central car park which was formerly known as the market place.
For our study tour, we were planning on visiting three venues in the day which were:
En route, we also discovered Stamp Pizza & Bar.
Here’s some history and I liked that there were numerous of these boards located around the town.
And some more history, which saves me writing it.
After visiting our four venues, we also had time to pop into the town’s church, but more about that in future posts. We then meandered to the town’s central car park to get the bus back, but then found the previous bus was running over thirty minutes late so we caught that one instead. En route, there were some fraught discussions between a passenger and the driver about that which I’d suggest were sub-optimal to say the least, but it’s perhaps best not to dwell on that.
Anyway, back to some thoughts about the day. There aren’t many pubs left in Aylsham now compared to how many that there were once were, but all of them offered a friendly welcome and they had at least two real ales available. The pubs were all clean, comfortable and well maintained, with the prices being reasonable for beer, although the Black Boys was a little punchy in terms of its food pricing. However, there was a selection of venues to suit probably most tastes, but I have to note that the best beer options that I saw during the day were in Stamp. This isn’t really how I think things should ideally be, pubs should perhaps be offering a wider selection of craft beer and especially so if they’re free from tie.
Once again, I feel the need to note that it’s marvellous that the three pubs and one pizzeria are trading and open to be used by the local community, especially as Stamp has only been open for a couple of months. These are difficult times for pubs and I’d suggest to others that a little pub crawl around Aylsham is a perfectly fine way to spend the afternoon. Your experiences may well differ, but I’d say that Julian and I had another marvellous day out. But these study tours remain hard work, and I have to repeat that we don’t do them for fun, but as a service to the community.