Royal Hotel Grenfell

After leaving the welcoming confines and brilliant poetry of Caragabal behind, we headed on to our penultimate stop on this leg of the Tour: the Royal Hotel Grenfell.

Grenfell is a town I’d been through once or twice previously, but never stayed long. But it’s a decent sized place for that part of the state. Although, for some reason, when we drove up, the streets were completely and utterly deserted. Like the kind of deserted where you expect either a pair of gunslingers to step out to face each other or a horde or zombies to come running around the corner. In either scenario, there would probably be a tumbleweed involved somewhere.

So we parked anywhere we wanted on the empty street and wandered into the Royal. The Royal itself was not actually deserted. It was by no means packed, but still a bit of a contrast compared to the eerie emptiness outside.

The pub itself was fairly standard. Decent, if a bit run-of-the-mill selection of beers on tap. There was a ‘Grenfell Lager’ but that one was apparently out when we visited. There was a fair bit of comfortable seating and a pool room in the back. It was a more than acceptable place to relax with a beer. So generally everything you want in a Royal without really standing out a whole lot.

The one thing about the pub that definitely jumps out at you is the vast array of bottle openers mounted to every wall, beam, and window frame. And the selection was genuinely impressive. I don’t know if there was any specific point to collecting all of those bottle openers. But as someone who is typing this post because he and his mate are going to every pub in Australia with a certain name essentially just because, I’m certainly not one to criticise.

As we were not far from our final Royal of the day and the trip, we didn’t stay long at the Royal Hotel Grenfell. There was nothing overtly wrong or off-putting about the pub. It just ended up falling into the middle ‘decent but unremarkable’ Royal category. So we bid Grenfell farewell and off we went to the final Royal on this leg, Parkes.

Royal Stats

• Town/Suburb: Grenfell, NSW
• Population: 3,597
• Date Visited: Saturday, February 10, 2024
• Visited By: Cory, John, Jase, and Bert
• Beer Sponsorship on Sign: XXXX
• Beer Consumed at Pub: Great Northern
• Price of Schooner of Said Beer: $7.00
• Unique Award: Best Royal Bottle-Opener Collection
• Tour Progress: 40.9% (56/137)