Minster Inn, York

A real favourite of mine. There are two rooms and a drinking corridor, plus a tiny yard at the back for smokers. The beer range doesn't change much: Brakspear Bitter, Hobgoblin, Marstons Bitter and Double Drop, plus (as always) Jennings Sneck Lifter. The atmosphere is really friendly, a pub whose landlord and locals always welcome strangers and tourists. The puzzles on the tables and mantelpiece are constantly being added to by regulars and now include some wooden ones. The pub is handy for York City's ground if you're going to the football.

This pub is unaltered and is quite close to the city walls but outside them,it was a Stones house in the 80s but now has products mainly from Marstons like Wychwood Hobgoblin, Jennings Cumberland or Marstons beers, this is a small and cosy pub that is well worth a visit and it is a short walk to the recentley opened (about a year) Bay Horse at the bottom of this road.

Nice friendly pub lying in the shadow of the walls of the ruined St Mary's abbey. A Marston's house so beers from their stable only but very well kept, the pub deservedly is a GBG regular. The layout is the original Edwardian one also seen in the Blue Bell, although in a lighter style here with two bars off a drinking corridor all served from the same central servery. Five pumps with the Marstons beers including a cask lager from Wychwood called Regal, wasn't that a brand of very cheap cigarettes a few years ago? Simple décor in keeping with the clean Edwardian lines, the wall of corks, some old photos of the pub and some beer cellar related brassware.

They had Sneck Lifter, Brakspear’s Bitter, and Jennings Tom Fool on. I had the Tom Fool, which was fine. There were sparklers on all the taps, but trying to blend in with the locals I pretended that I was used to drinking beer that came looking like a cream soda, but I doubt whether I fooled anyone. I found this an interesting an unusual pub. You enter into a corridor, which leads to a separate room on the left; on the right is another smallish room that contains the bar counter. The side of the bar counter is actually in the corridor, and when I was in the pub there was a local propping up the bar while standing in the corridor. A couple of other unusual things about this place is the chimney breast covered with wine bottle corks, and the solid metal puzzles on the tables for use by customers who must like to fidget with something while drinking. But this struck me as a real locals’ pub, and I would be happy to pay a return visit if in the area again.