Royal Hotel Armidale
After a great night in Tenterfield, it was time to pull ourselves together and head back to Armidale for our flight home. But first, there was one more Royal to hit on this trip: the Royal Hotel Armidale.
So after an excellent breakfast at Bad Manners (highly recommended if you happen to be in Tenterfield on a sunny morning), we bid farewell to Tenterfield, Turner and Big Al and headed back south.
Armidale was meant to be our first Royal of the trip. But given our flight fiasco, we had to rejig. And we were now hitting it at the back end of the trip. So admittedly we had a little bit less enthusiasm than we might have if we hit the Royal Hotel Armidale first up as originally planned.
But that was all out of our hands. So we finally hit Armidale on a bright Sunday morning. Unsurprisingly given the time of day, it was pretty quiet when we finally got there. It was pretty nice inside, if a little bit standard. We were literally the only patrons in the place so we were able to have a bit of a wander and have a good look around.
There were two or three big seating areas, a nice bistro, and a TAB area. All looked pretty nice without being overly spectacular (with the exception of the bistro, that definitely looked very fancy).
One big point in its favour is that they had New England Brewing Co beer on tap. I am a fan and, even though it’s brewed just down the road in Uralla, this was the time we’d seen it on the trip. So we grabbed schooner of New England Brewing Pale Ale each and headed off to settle in for the last beer of the trip.
We wandered past the bistro, which was unfortunately not yet open. But that was probably for the best as it looked way too classy for us anyway.
But we eventually found an area of the pub that corresponded to our classiness level. The Royal Hotel Armidale is genuinely nice pub. And I do feel a bit bad that we only saw it on a Sunday morning. It definitely had the feel of a place that would go off on a weekend. We weren’t there in quite the right mood or at quite the right time to give the pub a proper chance. But it was still good.
It’s the kind of pub that I could see potentially being a good local if I lived in Armidale. They even had a boozy book club. But on the day, we just relaxed in the one of the lounge areas and reminisced about another leg of the Royal Tour in the books. Eventually we finished our beers and had to declare this leg of the tour closed. So back to the airport we went.
The Royal Hotel Armidale was the last of the trip and was the last of the Royals we’ve been to this far. And our next trip isn’t until February. So this will be the last Royal post for a little while. But in the meantime, the blog will return to its roots with some beer recommendation and brewery visit posts.
Royal Stats
- Town/Suburb: Armidale, NSW
- Population: 23,967
- Date Visited: Sunday, August 10, 2025
- Visited By: Cory, John, and Bert
- Beer Sponsorship on Sign: None
- Beer Consumed at Pub: New England Brewing Pale Ale
- Price of Schooner of Said Beer: $9.00
- Unique Award: Best Royal Reading Club
- Tour Progress: 71.8% (97/135)