Royal Hotel Camden

With the Royal Tour’s big smoke leg in our rearview mirror, it was time head back out to regional New South Wales.  So naturally, the logical place to start this next leg was…Western Sydney.  Our sojourn back out to the Central West started with a detour via the Royal Hotel Camden.

With the excitement that always accompanies the beginning of a new leg of The Tour, we departed bright and early.  It had only just gone 10am when we arrived at the Royal Hotel Camden.  As I’ve written about previously, there’s always a bit of trepidation walking into a pub that early in the morning.  That being said, some of our best and most surprising Royals have been the ones we’ve hit earlier in the morning that we’ve been super comfortable with.  Ryde and especially Manilla spring to mind on that front.  Even Bondi was a pretty cool place for an A.M. ale.

So with all of that in mind, we wandered in to a completely deserted pub.  Again, this was 10 am on a workday.  So it’s not exactly an indictment on the pub that there wasn’t a whole lot of atmosphere at that time.  But we ambled up to the bar and got us a couple of schooners of Crikey Ale, a beer I’d never seen before nor since.

As we settled in, still high on the excitement of a fresh leg of the tour, we took in our surroundings.  The front area you first walk through was almost restaurant-y, but still very nice.  And lots of booths on the perimeter to maintain a proper pub vibe.  Once you get into the bar area, it gets distinctly more pub-y with tall tables and screens showing the Queensland Cup rugby league match from the night before.

All in all, this was a pretty nice pub.  I have no idea what it would be like if we showed up at an actual normal pub time.  But even though the whole place was empty except for us and an intermittent barman, it seemed like a genuinely nice pub.  Good food (from what we could see from the menu), nice décor, it ticked a lot of boxes.

But all too soon, the time had come to get back on the road and venture on for our next morning Royal.  But if I ever found myself back in Camden at a more reasonable hour for a beer, I would most definitely be giving the Royal Hotel another crack.

Royal Stats

• Town/Suburb: Camden, Sydney, NSW
• Population: 3,230
• Date Visited: Friday, May5, 2023
• Visited By: Cory, John
• Beer Sponsorship on Sign: None
• Beer Consumed at Pub: Crikey Ale
• Price of Schooner of Said Beer: $6.50
• Unique Award: Royal that Would Have Likely Improved the Most If We Had Visited at a Reasonable Time
• Tour Progress: 20.5% (28/136)