Royal Hotel Woodstock

After an eventful night in Orange, the Royal Tour rolled on to the next stop on the Central West leg and the first stop on the Tour’s fabled Light Beer Lane: the Royal Hotel Woodstock.

Please also note that I have now taken the reigns back from John for the next couple of posts. I think we all enjoyed John’s brief foray into pulling his weight blog-post wise. But it’s back to business as usual for a few posts at least until I can guilt him into writing a few more.

After extracting ourselves from the Royal Hotel Orange, we had a bit of a night out and went on something of a pub crawl around the venues Orange had to offer. This included a fair bit of yelling at the TV as the Socceroos achieved a glorious World Cup victory over world powerhouses Tunisia. But a sizeable breakfast and couple of coffees saw us on the road again.

Our destination, the legendary Light Beer Lane. This is the most condensed stretch of Royal Hotels in all of Australia. In less than a 50km stretch from Woodstock to Blayney there are a whopping 5 Royals to be hit. And even though Woodstock was the furthest LBL Royal away from Orange, it’s opening time of 10am meant that (after a few minor detours around flooded roads) it was our first stop of the day.

Royals that open at 10am definitely help us out from a scheduling perspective. But there’s always that slight bit of trepidation of what kind of clientele you might encounter in a pub a 10am. It’s not like it’s 7am (ahem, Orange), but still. Luckily we needn’t have had any such trepidations as the Royal Hotel Woodstock was welcoming, comfortable, and really cool looking to boot.

The Royal Hotel Woodstock is one of those really ornate old school pubs. Similar to the recent Royal in Manildra but with an extra nostalgic dose of slightly faded grandeur. It’s easily one of the cooler, more classic looking Royals we’ve had the good fortune to visit so far.

The interior had been done up fairly recently, featuring a welcoming corrugated metal bar and barrel tables. There were a couple of cool flourishes, like the narrow stained glass windows alongside the main entry doors. One in particular featured a small yellow bird from the Peanuts comic strip. Well done Woodstock.

The walls were adorned with the requisite historical photos and local sporting paraphernalia. One thing that does deserve special mention is the local Woodstock rugby team. John and I both consider ourselves connoisseurs of local sporting team names and jerseys, but I’m sure John is in agreement that the Woodstock Wallys may just take the top spot.

Our schedule meant that we could only stay for one beer. So we had two. The Royal Hotel Woodstock is one of those Royals that we could’ve easily spent half a day at. The menu looked pretty good too and they had an excellent outdoor dining area. But alas, we had to get back onto Light Beer Lane and venture onward to our next stop in Lyndhurst.

Royal Stats

• Town/Suburb: Woodstock, NSW
• Population: 812
• Date Visited: Sunday, November 27, 2022
• Visited By: Cory & John
• Beer Sponsorship on Sign: None (Although there was a VB in the stained glass window)
• Beer Consumed at Pub: Tooheys New
• Price of Schooner of Said Beer: $6.40
• Unique Award: Best Self-Referential Stained Glass Window in a Pub
• Tour Progress: 10.29% (14/136)