Yarborough Hotel (JD Wetherspoon), Grimsby

Official site of Yarborough Hotel (JD Wetherspoon) - www.jdwetherspoon.com

Official site of Yarborough Hotel (JD Wetherspoon) - www.jdwetherspoon.com

Substantial 'spoons housed in the old station hotel, due to close temporarily for refurbishment shortly to offer accommodation again. Usual sort of furniture and decor in a wide variety of seating / dining areas on two levels. Reasonable selection of real ales from two banks of six handpumps in the front bar and another half-dozen at the back, including Black Horse Executioner's Assistant (£2.19).

This is an old school JDW taking up the ground floor of what was obviously an old Station Hotel. I could see no sign of the upper floors being used for anything. Inside it's a long narrow room with most of it having been raised but a few areas set at the original level. It was busy on my Saturday afternoon visit. Although there are three sets of six hand pumps here the beer choice wasn't that great, the combination of the JDW Trio Of Doom being doubled up, unused ones, available soon and the bogus use to advertise ciders in boxes in the fridge left just three beer options. These were Ringwood Old Thumper, Hobgoblin and Black Horse Thanks Pale Ale. I went for the Black Horse beer (£2.49) which was excellent. The standard guest ale price here is £2.19 and the food club prices low (£5.99 for the Steak Club and £5.85 for the Curry Club). Despite the indifferent beer choice I quite liked it here and the Black Horse brewery was a new one to me.

Large, rambling Wetherspoons pub, open plan but with various eating & drinking areas partially segregated and up and down small flights of stairs, individually named such as the ‘Viking Room’, with timber panelled walls and old prints: a fairly typically styled but better than average JDW makeover. Several visits have generally found it fairly busy, but not usually uncomfortably so. Ales come from three banks of six handpulls distributed around the bar, with only two or three duplicated as far as I could see on my latest visit yesterday, thus about thirteen ales and a couple of real ciders were available. I opted for a Kelham Island Pale Rider followed by a Tom Woods Bomber County, both in good condition. I’m not generally a Wetherspoons fan, but I liked this one.

When i first went in this pub it was called the Yarborough Vaults and it was a John Smiths tied house with no real ale. This is probably the first pub you will see if you have arrived in Grimsby on train. Wetherspoons have bought the pub and done it up in their usuall style and it does look quite grand from the outside,there is now the early opening hours and a good choice of guest beers on the bar but i tend to find Wetherspoons impersonal and they are not really my first choice of pub to go in. Having said that if you want a decent cheap pint after getting off a train then this is the place to go.