The Royal, Crossflats, Bingley

Situated in the area of Crossflatts, just north of Bingley, The Royal is just a short stroll down from the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, which is how we found it. It’s a decent local stone built building from the front but its back vista is not its best, so if approaching from the canal you will have to have the courage of your convictions to walk round to the front entrance. Or in my case convince the better half that after walking from Bingley and taking in the Three and Five Rise locks we should really try it out for a pint as there seemed to be nothing else in Crossflatts.. Internally it turned out to be a friendly enough locals pub with a central bar with two public like sections on either side and a separate more lounge like room farther back to the right. The bar has two banks of three hand pumps on each side dispensing the same three beers, which for our visit were GK IPA, Tetley Bitter and a decent enough Castle Rock Harvest Pale. There is an outdoor seating area but as its outback by the car parking area we decided to seat ourselves in the left hand area with its white walls, burgundy bench seating, typical dark patterned pub carpet and TV screen at the far end showing the racing with the volume high enough so that the locals all perched on the bar stools around the front of the semi-circular bar could hear it.. It fulfilled a need for us but not one I would be able to drag the wife back to. But for the locals it seemed to be performing perfectly well as a community pub and there were weekly poker and quiz nights advertised and occasional Saturday night music sessions.

Tetleys and Johns plus a guest on hand pull.