Roughley In Sutton Coldfield – According To Marston’s

 

Whilst I pretend to travel the Midlands in search of boozers selling Worthington and John Smith’s my real intention is to find pubs that Martin has never set foot in.

You can add Duncan, Mudgie, Paul Mudge (visit any of the aforementioned blogs and check out pictures of pub crawls) and BRAPA to that list as people who love a drink GBG tickers and members of the Beer And Pubs Forum.

Oh yes, I can now add Rich after he brazenly added himself to the doyen of beer, Roger Protz’s list of GBG tickers!

 

Having seen the relative shades of pink/green/orange in GBG books (pre app era), Stockport Staggers and pictures of Paul Mudge, avid blog followers will know I am up against it.

Nonetheless, I suspect Sutton Coldfield in Birmingham hasn’t featured too heavily on their trips in recent years, particularly a suburb such as Roughley.

Sutton Coldfield is constantly battling with Birmingham as it bids to breakaway (think Brexit but very civilised) and it probably won’t want Roughley as part of the Royal Town of Sutton Coldfield.

Roughley is classed as a housing estate part of the suburb to the north and heading towards Mere Green and Four Oaks (acceptable to Sutton Coldfield folk) whilst not a million miles from Walsall in one direction and Erdington in the other (unacceptable to Sutton Coldfield folk)

Mind you, when you look at the list of people who emanate from the salubrious part of North Birmingham or have lived there then it is clearly a list that rivals any suburb of Britain’s Second largest city.

Barry Bannan, Cat Deeley, Doug Ellis, Trevor Eve, Rob Halford (one for Mudgie there),  Arthur Lowe, Paul Merson, Darius Vasell, Dennis Waterman and Renato Pagilari.

The big man was famous for the 1982 classic “Save Your Love” with Renee

and was also a big Villa fan.  Apparently, Big Ron Atkinson got him to song Nessun Dorma to the Villa squad as an inspirational team talk on one occasion and that’s pretty good for a boy from Sutton.

Nonetheless, Roughley does possess a pub and it is on Slade Road right next to the Co-Op and known as 317 – The Plough & Harrow B75 5PF.

I was there at midday on a Saturday and this behemoth of a boozer, that the Midlands does really well, was already in full swing.

(Global domination taking shape)

According to the Marston’s’ website, this is actually in Little Sutton Lane and not actually in Roughley (not Gastro enough?) but this is definitely not gastro and is, in fact, a proper local boozer.

(classic local boozer info)

It has had a refurb recently and is selling sensibly priced food but the gaffer’s tones are as broad Brummie as you will find and the punters who are in here at this time are definitely Hi-viz jacket as opposed to business quarter.  A group of four lads popped out for a fag and never returned…

I had a decent half of Amber Ale (Banks’s) that was possibly first out of the traps at midday but decent enough and good to see Birmingham suburb bars with ale on.

It’s got a dartboard, pool table…

…beermats and a motorbike outside (possibly Rob Halford’s?)…

…and looks like the sort of place locals will visit as there are a massive number of chimney pots nearby.

A no nonsense pub that is well kept, has live sport, ale and all the pub team sports you would want…I reckon Paul Merson, Dennis Waterman and Trevor Eve are all likely to pop in here for a pint and a game of pool.

It won’t make the GBG and I reckon I might just have trumped Martin on this one…