The 12 Bells

In Attendance: +Golfyball +Iain Stuart +Jon Clark +John Urquhart +Rod Wilcox and +Martin Hatfield

Notable absentees: +Jason Brown +Chris Sheppard 

Weather: Damp, not raining, Cold, not freezing, Dark, not light.

First meeting of 2013 and it was a cracker...

The two elder members arrived ahead of the rest of us, because one of them is retired - and the other one might as well be. ;-) They'd had a day playing golf, eating breakfast and generally lazing about, while the rest of us earned a crust.

Stan, Sniff & Golfy caught the new golden number 10 bus up to Brockworth (complete with free WiFi) and then walked from the roundabout out towards the pub in the very pitch dark.  Claude did his best impression of Sir Chris Hoy and cycled.

A couple of tables in the corner were procured and we settled in for an evening of quizzes and badmin.

It's about two years since we visited this particular establishment, and a lot has changed, while a lot has stayed the same.  The general layout is exactly as it was, complete with almost impossible to find toilets. It's a long walk and completely the other side of the pub.

The place has been re-decorated and it's quite nice, warm and comfortable.  What lets it down though, is it's menu.  It's now a Beefeater, but sadly they've chosen to serve overpriced pub-grub.  In fact, if you order before 6.30 pm, many of the main courses are a mere £4.99, but later than this, the cheapest thing on the menu (apart from cheesy garlic bread) is a chicken burger for 9 quid.  Mine came with cold chips and (oddly) a piece of the lower half of the bun cut out of it....  Tasty, as it was, it is not recommended - purely because it felt like a rip-off.

We quizzed - and had winners in the shape of Sniffer & Claude.  Jugs found himself suffering under the weight of the wine and refused to write anything down towards the end - happy to play the part of my nan and shout the answers out instead of playing nicely.  All great entertainment.

We also carried out the badmin and generated the list of pubs for this years 52 pub challenge.  Here's the full list....

http://tinyurl.com/52PC2013

Each of the attendees need to complete the following table with a score out of 10 for each category.

Name	Location
12 Bells	Brockworth
Food
Beer Range
Larger Taste
Price
Ambience
Jukebox
Pool/Darts
Eye Candy
WiFi/3G

The older members took a Taxi home, while Claude got back on his bike and the remainder caught the posh night bus....   A good time was had by all.

Next weeks location is The Royal Union if numbers are above two - or else defaulted to the clubhouse.