Within the Walls - A York Pub Guide

The York Beer Census 2012

Well I’m a little late to the party, I’ll call it fashionably late, but been so busy over the last few weeks didn’t get time to write up a little blog entry about The Beer Census, that is until today!

Our mission that we undertook was to cover all 7 of the establishments on Goodramgate, clearly one of the best streets in York for pubs and real ale as it contains 2 of our 5 star pubs.

We met up for a preparatory meal in The Cross Keys kids in-tow and forthwith took over half the bar area. I was pleased to see that they knew we were coming and had pulled out all the stops, or 4 extra pumps and a draught cider at least. So we started well with 12 pumps there, and the meal was very pleasent, quality pub grub at reasonable prices. Seren would like to report that Blackcurrant Fruit Shoots were there too, so she was very happy.

It took us a bit longer than planned to get the crew moving so we headed to The Golden Slipper next a little behind schedule. There was a reasonable selection on there, mostly your run of the mill ales, and the bar-lady was a little bit scary. It was at this point our good ladies took the little ones off home and we swapped a few mate for a couple of others and made the massive journey nextdoor to The Royal Oak, who had a good selection and even a Treboom. As ever the staff were very friendly and we took stock of how long we had to cover the rest of the pubs, not as long as we’d like. We thought it rude not to try a pint in each.

So we picked up the pace a little more heading to Vahe Bar, that although exibiting a huge range of international beers like Leffe on tap unfortunatly only had 2 real ales on, great shame we couldn’t include such craft beers, maybe next year? Vahe Bar is deffinitly one of our favorites in York and I highly recomend popping in, lovely owners and great building.

A this point the heavens opened and boy did it tip it down, our mate James was very concerned that the run across the road to The Habit would ruin his fancy hair, haha. Now The Habit is the only pub on Goodramgate that we haven’t reviewed yet, so we were very pleased to visit (review will be online soon), just a few ales on here and we even managed to grab a moment on their Minster facing terrace after the rain passed. But we were really running out of time now, (maybe next year we can make it closing time to get the forms in CAMRA?) So we decided, shock horror, to just take down the ales in The Snickleway Inn and not stop for a drink. The place was rammed either way and had about 6 ales on if I remember rightly. Deffinitly a boozer type pub though, not really our scene. 

So finally, and rather drunkly we took on the massive mission of writing down all 16, yes 16, count them, real ales that The Old White Swan had on, our final port of call… luckily! It was a swift drink and a taxi booked to return our form to The Waggon & Horses. Would have like to stay a little longer as The Old White Swan is another of our favourites, especially with their 1am closing! 

So that was our mission complete, although with the final results of 241 unique real ales on throughout York we didn’t quite pip Norwich, we had a great time and hope next year to well and truly trounce them. Official figures do show though that there were 157 pubs in the Greater York Area with real ale and a staggering 548 beers available, 54 of which pubs were within the walls hosting 245 beers, many of them brewed within 25 miles of York! All in all it’s mighty impressive and you can see why York has such a good and ever increasing reputation as one of the best Cities for pubs in the UK. It also makes the Within the Walls mission all the more challengingly pleasurable. Till the next one, be proud York!