How to ruin a good pub

A nice mini-crawl up Mansfield Road the other night took me past what used to be one of the best pubs in Nottingham, The Golden Fleece.

The Left Lion, which I'm a bit loathed to disagree with, describes it thus:

The Golden Fleece used to be a bit of an old man’s pub, much in the same vein as the Lincolnshire Poacher, The Rose of England and a few other pubs along the Mansfield Road strip. That was until it was bought out by the crew who run Detonate and given a complete overhaul.

Inside it is now a discreetly cool venue, with great music and entertainment on offer. Many of the original features remain in tact (such as the window in the floor at the end of the bar that looks down into the beer celler), but the place itself is enitrely different. The food is really good (winning the best bar food award at the 2007 Nottingham bar awards). They pride themselves on their Sunday lunches and having sampled the beef dinner we can only concur. Drinks-wise they serve the usual selection of beers, wines and spirits at fairly normal prices. There are plenty of nice places to sit with your mates too.

Being owned by the same people as one of the biggest nights in Nottingham club music has its obvious advantages. There is always a chance you might get to see an exclusive pre-gig set.

The place is also home to the brand new LeftLion quiz. Every Wednesday members of the LeftLion crew rock up and ask the questions that matter (…or not) with a unique audio experience. Come along and join in the fun!!

So yeah, all in all we like it a lot and think that with this place alongside Fade, The Maze and The Loft, Mansfield Road is becoming a new hive of Nottingham drinking cool!

They're not wrong, but this also describes the best way to ruin a good pub.

It may have seemed like an "old man's pub", lots of snugs, a real fire, an older customer base, but it suited everybody. Where there's a lot of different areas in a pub, you can get a lot of different people inside, all happy with their piece.

Unfortunately it's now all open plan, decorated like a Travel Inn bathroom, the music's s***e and it's full of people who think nothing of spending a fiver on a bottle of cold piss with a foreign name, but who can't nip down to TK-MAX and spend £2.50 on a belt to keep their f***ing scruffy trousers up.

Tossers.

(Photo courtesy of Flikr)