Prop Up the Bar

Shoreham-by-Sea

2025-05-14T00:27:00.000-07:00

A trip to the Sussex coast where we opted to head to Shoreham-by-Sea, situated between Worthing and Brighton & Hove. It's somewhere that has never been on my radar before, which is what's great about following the Good Beer Guide and picking somewhere with three entries to visit on a Spring afternoon.

Although it's not - let's be honest - the prettiest of coastal towns. A handful of older buildings around St Mary de Haura church, remnants of the Victorian sea port industry, new-build apartments, houseboats and fancy pads on the seafront on Shoreham Beach.

We walked across the River Adur on the footbridge - too early for the Greene King Waterside Inn - then onto the lengthy decking that saves trudging over the pebbles of the beach.

Shoreham by Sea is twinned with Żywiec, where your favourite Polish beer comes from.
And is the birthplace of Leo Sayer - a missed statue opportunity.
They won't be making any decisions to commission that statue in the old town hall building, which has become the Funky Dragon.

Possibly due to the port industry past and present, Shoreham has its fair share of pubs. We passed a few picturesque ones along the High Street: the pirate figurehead adorning the Crown and Anchor and the modest tiles of The Marilipins.
So just typical that our destination was the one that wasn't going to make a good picture thanks to the scaffolding.

Piston Broke (88 High Street, Shoreham-by-Sea, BN43 5DB)
We worried for a moment whether it was actually open, but were pleased to find the door ajar and lights on. Although no-one else had ventured past the scaffolding as it was completely empty.
The bonus of this being we got the best seats in the house, which are obviously these ones...

Beers come straight from the barrel on racking behind the bar. Three local ales, two from Uckfield's 360° Brewery, one from Langham's of Petworth.

A so-so 360° 'Bluebell' Sussex bitter for me, the thickest pulp-fest of a cider, East Stour 'Tropical Pineapple', for Mrs PropUptheBar.

Okay, it would have been nice to have some other customers, but we had pole position in the old car seats, Summer of 69 and Freefalling to entertain us.

We needed a bite to eat in a town where all the pubs we planned to visit were wet-led. So we diverted to the pedestrianised East Street where I'd spotted the Tap House earlier which was scoring three-pints on WhatPub for beer quality.

Tap House (16-18 East Street, Shoreham-by-Sea, BN43 5ZE)
More laid-back restaurant/cafe bar than tap house in style, with such painfully dull MOR music that Coldplay would have livened things up. But they had two hand pumps and half a dozen keg beers offering something a little different. And a super-enthusiastic server who informed us everything on the menu was "fantastic" and seemed much more impressed with Mrs PropUptheBar's choice of Firebrand 'Wild Honey Belgian Blonde' than my cask Harvey's.

It was the super-light and easy-going Harvey's 'Sisters' table beer that I opted for, with their 'Best' being the other available ale.
And the veggie wellington was indeed fantastic.

Suitably fed and watered, we moved on, strolling the 6 or 7 minutes to the east of the town centre to the Duke. It wasn't scaffolding scuppering my picture here - instead a scruffy van parked slap-bang in the way of a cracking pub frontage.

Duke of Wellington (368 Brighton Road, Shoreham-by-Sea, BN43 6RE)
Top marks for the Wellington boot signage.
And an impressive bit of brickwork welcoming you to the public bar...

The Duke of Wellington is a regular award winner and Guide regular, with an impressive line up of handpumps adorning the bar.
As I'm not going to see it anywhere else, I picked the house beer 'Wellington American Pale', brewed by the pub in collaboration with Downlands Brewery. And very nice it was too.

If I'm going to pick fault though, there was surprisingly little seating in a decent sized pub. One corner of the L-shaped room was taken up by a stage, set for entertainment later in the day, the other by bar billiards, whose players we had to squeeze past a couple of times.

To make up for the minimal indoor tables, the garden out back is super, with several covered areas including wood burners and Bass signs, providing a bit of character for those stuck outside.

We had one final GBG 2025 pub visit to make before moving on from Shoreham. This was in a central location close to the train station. This time decking replacement works spoiled the perfect pic - that and the sky becoming progressively dull.

The Buckingham Arms (35 Brunswick Road, Shoreham-by-Sea, BN43 5WA)
We entered to Walsall on the telly and Kenny & Dolly singing Islands in the Stream.

This was by far the busiest of the three Shoreham GBG pubs, despite being the one whose entry was most likely to raise an eyebrow.
Lots of locals, a handful of them lined up blocking the bar on sturdy stools, not much necessity for the cask hand pumps during the time I was there.

That cask choice was Harvey's 'Best' or 'Georgian Dragon' and a Wadworth '6X'.
The fruity, ruby coloured Georgian Dragon for me - originally brewed as a St George's Day special in 2010 although it's now become an all-year-rounder.

And with that, I declared Shoreham-by-Sea done. Although there were plenty more bars for the more committed pub explorer and I suspect it'll be all-change when the 2026 beer guide comes out.

Next up: I move along the coast to Eastbourne, in search of sunshine.

Codsall & the Club of the Year

2025-05-11T04:38:00.000-07:00

I had several options to break my journey between Shrewsbury and Birmingham New Street, as I headed back toward home.
But I relished the opportunity to pay a revisit for Holdens ale in Codsall Station, so that's where I decided to hop off the train.
It just so happened that this gave me the chance to get a micropub Beer Guide tick and call in to the current CAMRA Club of the Year whilst there.

Codsall Station (Chapel Lane, Codsall, WV8 2EJ)
This is a pub that isn't just the closest to the railway station - it is the railway station. Local brewers Holdens converted the waiting room, offices and station masters house in 1997. It's a thoroughly pleasing place, with a couple of rooms, a conservatory, and a terrace to the side from which you can make a dash when you see your train coming.

Holdens serve up their trad bitter, special and golden. 'Black Country Bitter' for me on this occasion, just gone midday being a wee bit early for the 5.1% special.

The last time I was here, the whole side room was occupied by a group of real ale and train enthusiasts, but on this visit I had it to myself.
Great cushioned bench seating around the sides, railway memorabilia on the walls, and a smart GWR patterned carpet.

Too early for my lunch for me, which is a shame because the menu is pub grub gold. The top-billed faggots, chips/mash, peas and gravy are tempting me away from vegetarianism. Lasagne, burgers, chilli, omelettes...chips with Holden's Ale Gravy 😋 - anyone better than me at creating itineraries for a day out should allow time to eat here.

I left the station and ambled up the street to central Codsall, then through a supermarket car park to the front of the Firs Club.

Firs Club (Station Road, Codsall, WV8 1BX)
Hmmm...it all looked very smart. And I had to walk past people discussing a future event, then ponder the guest book in the hallway wondering if I should sign in.
Tricky business, beer guide clubs.
But this was one of the best welcomes from bar staff that I've come across - the lovely lady had chatted to me for 5-minutes and pulled my pint of Hobsons 'Equinox' before asking "CAMRA are you?", as if she hadn't already clocked me as such!

Other picks in the run of five ales were Wye Valley 'HPA', Purity 'Gold', Greene King 'Spring Break' (one of their Future Brewers beers, which are normally pretty good), and Black Sheep 'Respire'.
One old boy kept appearing from another room for his next half as he proudly declared he was working his way through the lot.
Somewhere there's apparently an on-site micro brewery, but no sight of their home brew on this occasion.

Your starter for ten: Name the football ground on the telly.

Not for the first time in a club, the staff insisted on telling me that I was there at a quiet time (nothing new there, I'm there at a quiet time almost everywhere I go!). Most of the members were off playing for various sporting teams in the daytime and were due to descend on the Firs later.

The staff also quizzed me about where I'd been and was going - a thumbs up for the micro; a frown at the Joules pub; a recommendation to catch a bus to the Wolves suburbs to Hail to the Ale. And I may have changed my plans and done just that had Hail... not had such challenging opening hours.

I'm sure it'd be a different experience when full of all its members, but I still enjoyed a quiet and relaxed Firs Club.

Now let's brave the Joules...

The Crown (1 Wood Road, Codsall, WV8 1DB)
I see what they were trying to do with the play on words, painting 'The Crown Joule's' on the front of the pub.
Except they seem to have named themselves after a brand of pants...

Two pairs of underpants for £35.00 - crikey, modern life is expensive.

All sources tell me this was a jazz club of some national fame from the late 60's to early 80's, so I hoped to find some enlightening history about the venue. Yet, I can't find any specifics or old pictures. Apparently, the music used to happen in the back room, now the library room.

Joules took over in 2015, gave it a makeover throughout and reopened the pub in 2016.
Lots of wood. Reclaimed furniture, old ale house touches, a maritime theme to the pictures, old beer barrel tables in one of the many different sections. It's certainly well done, if not your authentic olde pub experience.

Four Joule's cask ales on offer, from which I picked a decent IPA with a pump clip and name that at least make it sound more traditional than most things which call themselves India Pale Ales.

A beer on good form. In a comfortable, if a bit too quiet, pub. With Arctic Monkeys, the Beatles, and Dire Straits as a background soundtrack.

Almost directly across the road from the Crown Joule's is the Beer Guide listed micro, benefitting from tables in the sunshine and busier than its five-times-the-size neighbour.

Love & Liquor (1-3 Church Road, Codsall, WV8 EA)
This micro was converted from a shop in 2019 and has picked up a 2022 South Staffs CAMRA branch pub of the year award.
Local faves Butty Bach and HPA on cask, plus Ossett 'Excelsior', Oakham 'Bishops Farewell' and this stuff..

The Allendale 'Anvil' was a cracking pint to finish my visit to Codsall on.
A chance to catch up with the footy on the telly, cheery staff and punters, a delivery of a giant bag of cobs arriving as I was halfway through my pint. Crusty variety: leaving a pile of guilty crumbs at the foot of my stool.

I missed the most traditional pub in town. But I'm pleased to have ventured beyond the station this time around - Codsall is somewhere well worth hopping off the train to visit.

Oswestry & the Pub of the Year

2025-05-06T08:14:00.000-07:00

An excursion to the Shropshire border to visit the current reigning CAMRA Pub of the Year, the Bailey Head in Oswestry.
I do like the POTY competition and had been following the shortlisting from 17 regional nominees to 4 finalists, determined I'd visit the eventual winner.
Of course, it'd be a little bit handier for me if The Bell in Aldworth just won every year, but I relished this chance to visit somewhere new.

From my Shrewsbury base I hopped aboard the 11am X5 bus, scheduled to arrive just in time for the pub doors opening.
Straight to the square, guild hall on one side, pub on t'other.

And I'm going in...

Bailey Head (Oswestry, SY11 1PZ)
The Bailey Head is an open-plan pub with several distinct cosy areas, nicely decorated with a lived-in feel.
Ales on the bar came from Brew York, Ossett, Two By Two, Big Trip and local brewer Stonehouse. That's a pretty hip and crafty cask selection, although I went for the most pedestrian of the lot with the local 'Station Bitter'.
It's probably for the best that I didn't spot the cider list before sitting down with my pint. Oh, and plenty of appealing keg options too.

Being here early doors meant I got to have a good nosey around whilst it was quiet - just a couple of locals with shopping bags, a dog walker, and a few punters on the benches out front in the fine weather.
So, what makes it pub of the year.
Pump clips stuck on the ceiling and old AC/DC posters, of course.

It really is a super welcoming and friendly pub to settle in - and I wish it was just around the corner from my house.

I perhaps should have spent the afternoon in one place. But I'm not very good at that.
Oswestry looked fine in the sunshine, 'bustling' on this Friday afternoon. It's home to around 17,500 folks and an impressive roster of associated famous people, including Ian's Woosman and Hunter, of golfing success and Mott the Hoople respectively.
And this English town is home to regular Welsh football league title winners and Champions League contenders The New Saints, meaning there should really have been a better collection of obscure stickers on lampposts and pub cisterns that there actually was.

I don't like missing a Wetherspoon's, even if this one wasn't one of the prettiest in the chain.
So that's where I headed next...

The Wilfred Owen (17 Willow Street, Oswestry, SY11 1AF)
The building was originally a Royal Mail sorting office, prior to regenerating into Spoons in 2003.
It's named after famous war poet Wilfred Owen, who was born just outside Oswestry in 1893 and almost certainly hoped that his poetry would remind all of the realities of war and that we'd be able to get a pizza and pint deal in a pub named after him.

This was very much of the 'haven't I been here before' Spoons variety. The one-long-room type with regimented tables, bar along one side, toilets upstairs through a succession of doors, and an industrial ceiling.

But it did everything I wanted it to do, providing some food and a Swannay 'Chance Your Arm' guest ale, on good form.
My dilemma next was whether to visit one of the town's previous beer guide entries, or the one that looked most likely to join the Bailey Head in the guide next year, or somewhere with one of those little heritage symbols.

Oak Inn (47 Church Street, Oswestry, SY11 2SZ)
The heritage option won - the Oak Inn being an early 18th century building that was formerly the coach house of the hotel next door.
Look!...Heritage gaming...

There was a pick of four ales, two from Castle Rock, 'Butty Bach' or Weetwood. I ordered the Weetwood 'Best' from neighbouring Cheshire, a decent brown bitter.
The Oak Inn has separate front and back rooms connected by a short passage beside the bar. Basic in the front, with leather cushioned bench seating; a bit plusher and redder in the back room, where the TV screen dominated and most of the local crowd had gravitated.
I settled in the front, the chaps to the side discussing who was on holiday where and what vacation horrors had befallen them.

Moving on from the town centre I wanted to make it out to the village of Weston on the southern fringe of Oswestry. Being a fool I only looked at the road route that Google was directing me on, whereas a glimpse at the Ordnance Survey would have shown me I could follow the Wat's Dyke Way.

I'm really quite bitter about not checking - the trek for a mile-and-a-bit along a busy road through an industrial estate was one for the crap walks to pubs collection.

The final 5-minutes was along a lane with no footpath, until crossing a railway bridge and being welcomed by a brewery sign.
So was it worth it?
Well, as far as beer gardens go, this is a bit of winner...

Stonehouse Brewery and Distillery (Weston Road, Weston, SY10 9ES)
Stonehouse were established in 2007, developing a 22-barrel plant and opening the visitor bar in 2013. It's a thoroughly modern shed, with several seating areas and lots of reserved signs on the tables.
From the three cask ales available I picked the 'Aoraki', Nelson Sauvin hopped pale in the breweries NZ hop series.

I stayed inside to drink this until the predominance of shorts reminded me the weather was lovely and I should really be in outside.

So I took a half of the 'Dark Force' keg porter to a picnic bench amongst the cider apple orchard.
Stopping en-route to get April's shiny brewing equipment picture...

Still ignorant of the footpath route I retraced my steps on a long trudge back to Oswestry, checked the bus times and figured I could probably squeeze a half pint in back at the Bailey Head.

And this time I didn't miss the cider list, procuring a potent Rosies Triple-D 'Wicked Wasp', concocted not too far away in Llandegla, just outside Wrexham.

So, that's Pub of the Year done. What about the Club of the Year?

Shrewsbury Pub Explorations

2025-04-28T13:50:00.000-07:00

I mentioned at the end of the Shifnal post that there was a pint of Bass waiting for me in Shrewsbury. It just wasn't where I expected it to be.

Arriving at 3:30pm on a gloriously sunny day, I strolled through the county town, birthplace of Charles Darwin, pop group T'Pau, and England goalkeeper Joe Hart.
Only one of those has a statue outside the library (so far)...

This was my second visit in recent years to Shrewsbury, the last being in November 2019 which is why there are a few obvious omissions from today's selection of pubs.
On that visit everything had been very grey and miserable, but today the sunshine was bringing out the best of the city.

Just don't get distracted by A-boards when photographing olde-worlde buildings.

"▲Bass sold here"
A diversion on the way to the hotel? Don't mind if I do!

Kings Head (48 Mardol, Shrewsbury, SY1 1PP)
This old 15th century inn was once named The Last Inn being the final hostelry on the route out of town towards the Welsh border. It was renamed The Kings Head around 1780 and looks the part as one of Shrewsbury's oldest remaining inns.
Well, outside at least.
A bit of research tells me that there's an ancient wall painting of the last supper within the pub. So, typical that instead of photographing that, this uncultured soul was busy taking pictures of his beer...

Other cask options on the bar were Old Speckled Hen or Butty Bach.
I'll be honest, my Bass wasn't bad, but wasn't great either.

The Kings Head is kitted out as a typical town boozer with shiny wooden floors, games machines and a neat paint job, failing to match up to the stunning exterior. It didn't feel very loved or lived in, perhaps the new management noted on the A-board not having had a chance to make their mark yet.

Springsteen played quietly in the background - introspective Bruce rather than Born in the USA Bruce.
Whilst I quaffed that pint of Bass and made ready to move on and check into my digs for the night.

My accommodation was another Wetherspoon Hotel experience, this time in the Good Beer Guide listed Shrewsbury Hotel, the fine weather attracting crowds to the tables in front of it.

My room was on the back with a view of rooftops and kitchen ventilation ducts rather than looking out over the al-fresco Spoons crowd.
Bag dropped off, layers shed, I emerged back out into the mini hotter-than-the-Med April heatwave and found my way back to oddly named Dogpole street...

Cromwell's Tap House (11 Dogpole, Shrewsbury, SY1 1EN)
At one time this was private housing, prior to being converted into the Warwick Hotel in the '40's. It looks a big place from the outside yet the bar is surprisingly compact, with stone floor and beamed ceiling and a fair bit of character.

There were two beers from Weetwood on cask, plus the Hobsons seasonal 'Harlequin' which I picked. And lots of interest on the keg lines too.
Most custom was out in the back yard, but I stayed in on a high stool to listen to the B52s, Carly Simon and Starship.

I had a little further to walk to the next pub: across the River Severn and suburban Shrewsbury.
I was on my way to a family-run Beer Guide regular which is a reliable Bass outlet.
Although a key part of the livery on the front is missing...

Any reports of residential properties near the Blind Monkey in Sheffield recently erecting 'Bass' above their front doors?

Cross Foxes (27 Longdon Coleham,Shrewsbury, SY3 7DE)
You can tell this is a glorious little pub the moment you walk in the door. It's confirmed once you take a sip of the beer and the staff turn up the volume of Erasure's 'A Little Respect' in response to an impromptu singalong by the least likely looking Erasure fans sitting at the bar.

If you don't fancy Bass (😱) there is Wye Valley 'HPA' and 'Butty Bach' on offer, plus the tempting Three Tuns 'xxxx'.
The pub is L-shaped, with dart board in one quiet corner and most of the punters settled on tables to the rear.

Sticking to the same side of town, I walked a short way to my final pub of the evening.

The Prince of Wales (30 Bynner Street, Belle Vue, Shrewsbury, SY3 7NZ)
This is an award-winning backstreet gem that ticks plenty of boxes for me:
☑ Great quality beer - superb choice.
☑ Bookshelf of old Good Beer Guides.
☑ Local football team memorabilia.
☑ Bowling green out back.
☑ Customers who politely ignore my hiccups.

On reflection only one of those is actually essential.

There were seven cask beers available, including beers you've heard of, local favourites, and a dark ruby mild.
Never turn down a dark ruby mild - in this case brewed by by Magic Dragon in Wrexham and at 3.6% rather more sensible in strength than the Sarah Hughes variety.

I took this out to the pleasant rear decking overlooking the bowling green where a match (game?) was just getting underway. There's a great football touch here too, with some of the seats at the edge of the green having been rescued from Shrewsbury Town's old Gay Meadow ground.

As evening blue sky gave way to dusk, I called it a night and headed back to the hotel.

For those wanting an Untappd check-in of something foolishly strong, you should head straight off the train into the Tap and Can, instead of searching out A-boards advertising Bass of dubious quality.
On my second day, I made sure to make it to pay it a visit...

Tap and Can (13 Castle Gates, Shrewsbury, SY1 2AB)
This was one of those places with too much to pick from, with a blackboard listing 10 keg lines and 4 cask. Oof..Holy Goat sour? Spaten Helles? Duration super-pale ale?
In the end I picked the Tartarus 'Harlequin' on cask.

I didn't know Tartarus did cask. In fact, I didn't know Tartarus did anything under 10%.
The Tap and Can is a micropub-style bar, decorated with pump clips, most of the seating on German beer-fest long benches.

They specialised in music I'd never heard of: Slow Fiction 'Brother' sounded great, less convincing were Ora Cogan or Van Houlten...who?
What we needed was a rendition of Paradise City...

I stayed for an unwise Cloudwater 'Chubbles' TIPA, a hefty 10%. A hefty £6 for a third.

I'd thoroughly recommend the Tap and Can and know that it'd be a challenge getting Mrs PropUptheBar past it and onward to the other delights Shrewsbury has to offer.
Such as Bass in the Woodman

The Woodman (32 Coton Hill, Shrewsbury, SY1 2DZ)

Butty Bach, HPA, White Rat, Lemon Dream, and Bass - your discerning cask selection, all priced at £4.35 a pint.
A recognisable soundtrack of EMF, The Beatles, Depeche Mode and Peter Gabriel.
Some serious dart throwing, a game of dominos in action and Warwick Davis presenting Tenable on the telly.

What more could you ask for?
It's a proper pub to end the evening in, although I've visited twice and missed the heritage lounge bar on both occasions. It's almost as if I wasn't thinking straight after a 10% triple IPA.

That's Shrewsbury explored. Next up: a trip into western Shropshire to Oswestry.

The Shifnal Shuffle

2025-04-24T03:46:00.000-07:00

With a couple of nights booked in Shrewsbury I was looking at the train route from Birmingham New Street for a stopping-off point, somewhere I'd not been before where I could visit a few new pubs, grab lunch and get a decent pint.
Shifnal provided three Good Beer Guide entries, but it was the appearance in Paul Bailey's blog, reporting on a proper day out in the town which sealed the deal.
Just gone midday, I was hopping off the train at eastern edge of Shropshire.

Wandering down the ramps and steps to escape the elevated train platforms, I made a right-hand turn out the station and reached the first GBG-listed pub in five minutes, complete with a wonderful pub sign and parked mobility scooter.

The Plough Inn (26 Broadway, Shifnal, TF11 8AZ)
This old 17th century building operated as a pub for years before closing and becoming D'arcy's eatery in 1996. Against the odds in a town with a fair few drinking establishments close together, it was revived as a proper pub in 2011.

The cask choice on my visit consisted of the local ales: Hobsons or Noble Craft from Market Drayton; alongside Millstone from Greater Manchester and Hopback from Wiltshire.

I picked the Noble 'Charge' - the one that was new to me and had the most impressive pump clip. A fruity golden ale, made with US Summit and Ernest hops and proving to be a fine, flavoursome first pint of the day.
Although it took an age to pour, one of those beers where more seems to be heading to the drip tray than the glass, with the staff stating it's 'lively'.

The pub has two sections to the front divided by wooden beams that would have once been a wall, a back room and suntrap back garden.
Towards the rear, they're displaying their football allegiance...

Wolves do seem to be supported by an awful lot of publicans from Worcestershire to the Black Country to Staffs. Seemingly more-so than any other team in the region. I've never knowingly found myself in a 'Villa pub'.
I avoided sitting under the signed shirts and grabbed a table in the window, a quiet pop soundtrack playing in the background ('Sweet But Psycho' by Ava Max, 'Born Again' by Lisa said Google; "Who?" said PropUptheBar).

Finishing my beer, I walked another five minutes up the road to my next planned destination.

The White Hart (High Street, Shifnal, TF11 8BH)
I'd known there was one Black Country Ales pub to visit in Shifnal, but this came as a bonus BCA tick (not that I ever seem to get any closer to visiting them all). It had only opened a couple of weeks earlier, aroma of paint still in the air, fixtures and fittings in immaculate condition.
It's a sizable place open-plan place with various corners and nooks and crannies.
My picture shows the empty left-hand section, complete with BCA beer list on a screen, although the rest of pub had people scattered throughout and was doing a decent lunch time trade.

It was still new enough for locals to be popping in to see what they've done with the place, one lady poking her head around a corner and commenting that "my mam and dad used to sit on a table in this spot every day in the nineties."
There was the usual huge choice of ales, Moonraker, Purity, Salopian, Beowulf the Black Country Ales alternatives.
I resorted to picking beer based on pump clips again...

And swerved the planned trad cheese & onion cob when I saw they served lunchtime jacket potatoes for £6.50 with two fillings and something called 'salad' at the side of it.
A great pub with a wide range of punters, good quality beer and some much needed nourishment.

Next stop, back in the centre of town, the micro:

Kings Yard (2 Cheapside, Shifnal, TF11 8BN)
Nestled between chips and kebab emporiums, the Kings Yard opened in May 2021. It veers away from the original Kent micro format with keg, spirits, bottle fridge, TV and comfy seats.
Real ale options were three from Wye Valley plus an Osset stout.

The foolhardy me would have had the Verdant 'Tippy IPA' on keg for £4 a third at 10%. But sensible me dominated this afternoon and picked the Wye Valley 'Samurai' - a "cutting edge amber", which was fine but I would probably have enjoyed the West Midlands fave Butty Bach more.

The chap behind the bar staff was vocally cheery about Villa being knocked out of the Champions League.
"You're not a Villa fan, then?" asked the fella on the next table to me.
His follow-up question being, "'Baggies'? is that a nickname for Wolves?"
Always do your football homework.

I enjoyed the Kings Yard - a comfy and reasonably characterful micro which benefitted from a decent amount of pub tat, proper seating and retro charity collection box.

My next target was the older Black Country Ales establishment...

The Anvil (22 Aston Road, Shifnal, TF11 8DU)
This was another of the town's pubs that shut down in recent years and was headed towards conversion into residential use. Black Country Ales arrived in 2018 after the Anvil had been shut for 18-months, gave it the usual yellow-hued makeover, modernised the WCs and the back patio and adorned the bar with a long row of pump clips.

Today, however, I think everyone had gone to check out the shiny new Wheatsheaf and abandoned the Anvil...

Apart from one chap who popped in, sunk a quick half and moved on, I had the place to myself, sat at the back of the room on comfy bench seating with a pint of Saltaire 'Mr Jinx'.
With it being so quiet I was worried about all the cobs stuffed into a cabinet at the side of the bar, so figured I should reduce it by one, lest they go to waste.

Second lunch: some good rings of red onion there, but the proper cob aficionado in me believes it should contain one enormous slab of cheddar instead of grated cheese.

More unfamiliar music which could only be identified by modern technology - Jelly Roll 'Save Me' - I was destined to not hear a single track I recognised in any of the Shifnal pubs playing music.

A quick check of train times suggested I could squeeze a half in one more pub, for which I picked the mustard-coloured Jaspers.

Jasper's Arms (15 Victoria Road, Shifnal, TF11 8AF)
It's certainly a looker, inside and out, although the sun being in the wrong place means I haven't done justice to the stand-out colour and mural on the side. Parked cars, scaffolding, people and the weather continue to scupper my pub photography.
Step through the door and there is an island bar, up-market leather seating, wooden floors and pump clip collection on the ceiling beams.

Greene King 'Abbot', Wye Valley 'HPA' and 'Butty Bach' on offer, but I had eyes only for the Holden's 'Golden Glow'.

A decent end to a couple of hours in this well-pubbed town.
I missed the Winking Frog (the one Martin paid extra attention to avoiding a typo on), the Crown and the Wheatsheaf, any of which may have been worthy of being added to my itinerary.
But there was a pint of Bass in Shrewsbury with my name on it.

Welcome to Kings Heath

2025-04-17T03:54:00.000-07:00

An afternoon's excursion into south Birmingham, where I planned to visit a micro, a cricket club and a backstreet heritage pub.
This was my first visit to Kings Heath and, to be honest, it didn't shout out 'look what you've been missing!' when I disembarked bus number 35 on the High Street.

So, what have I learnt about it?
Kings Heath was originally part of Worcestershire pre-1974 and lost its apostrophe in a contentious grammar issue in 2009. There's a plaque on the Hare & Hounds (which I maybe should have visited in hindsight) due to UB40 playing their first gig there. And residents include comedian Joe Lycett and Anthony E Pratt, who created the board game Cluedo.

Right, that's enough knowledge about the area, where's the micro pub?

Hop & Scotch (9 Institute Road, Kings Heath, Birmingham, B14 7EG)
This is a shop conversion tucked between Timpson's and Iceland, opened in 2018. Sofas in the spot by the window, high and low tables throughout the rest of the place, stark concrete ceiling and ventilation ducts, plus a superb choice of cask, keg and cans.
Arriving just at the time a group of blokes were being served meant craning to see the pump clips beyond them. I could see Neepsend, Bank Top, Kinver and Phoenix, whose 'Monkey Town' dark mild I picked. A superb beer.

Hop & Scotch have been the recipients of a fair few Local Pub of the Year awards - they've just been credited as Birmingham CAMRA Pub of the Year for the third year on the trot.
Although I'm not quite sure how I'd feel if I gave them a nice framed award and found it had been hung in the WC.

The top right 'best pub in the solar system' is the one you really want to win.

I could have stayed and picked another beer from the blackboards listing these at the side of the bar (yep, didn't see that when I was trying to peer past other customers on arrival). But I needed to move on and keep to schedule.

Is that Life After Football on the corner of Institute Road, supplementing his income by knocking out the Blues merchandise during the Easter holidays?

Resisting a flag or scarf, I strolled south of the heart of Kings Heath, veering right at All Saints and down Vicarage Road.

Time to find a picturesque pub...

Red Lion (229 Vicarage Road, Kings Heath, Birmingham, B14 7LY)
The Red Lion was built by the Priory Estate Company in 1904 to serve the new middle-class housing which they'd just built in this area. It was one of a new era of 'improved pubs', during which time the plan was to grant fewer licenses and ensure the ones given were to a better standard of pub.
And how better to make a statement that pub-going was a savoury pastime and the Red Lion a respectable place than to design it in a medieval religious style with carvings of monks quaffing ale.

It certainly looks great from outside and was welcoming and comfortable enough inside too. There were several rooms although I made it no further than the main bar where I was confronted by this beer choice...

The picture below gives away that I picked the one with the "I'm Hazy" tag hanging from the pump...

There was an odd mix of Shrek on TV and 'Last night a DJ Saved My Life' piped out the speakers, Shrek being watched avidly by one chap and ignored by everyone else.

A toddler in a Birmingham City top, part of a pan-generational birthday bash in the back room, waddled behind the bar every time he wasn't been watched. "Start 'em young", said the bar staff when the youngster was retrieved - I'm not sure if that was encouragement for drinking, relaxing child labour laws, or supporting the Blues.

Other than that there was a pleasing mix of custom in the Red Lion, doing a decent trade on a Saturday afternoon.

Moving on, I took a bit of a long way round the quiet residential side-streets as I made my way back to the A35 and down to the cricket club.

Kings Heath Cricket and Sports Club (Charlton House, 247 Alcester Road, Kings Heath, B14 6DT)
Ah...beer guide clubs. Sometimes great, sometimes less-so, often with the precarious feeling that you shouldn't really be there.
This one comes with the disclaimer on WhatPub that the "bar may only be open to members" and something about ringing the buzzer and signing in.
I bowled in confidently, hoping everyone would take me for a regular, only to find myself in a completely empty room.

The bar looked out two ways onto a sports bar full of frivolity and laughter, protected by a key-card lock, and onto the function room on t'other side where I'd found myself.
Oh well, at least I got served a pint of Yorkshire Heart 'Silverheart IPA' with no fuss (Wye Valley 'HPA' and 'Butty Bach' being the other options).

I timed my departure - cheerio empty room - just right to hop aboard a bus across the road and travel up to Moseley.

Hitting the bell and alighting at a crossroads in Moseley, Spoons next on the agenda...

Elizabeth of York (12a St Mary's Row, Moseley, Birmingham, B13 7JG)
It's not an especially glamourous one - the low ceiling variety stretching some way back from the road, with a staircase leading to a small balcony.
It gets to be named after the wife of King Henry VII due to Elizabeth giving the plot of land opposite the pub for the building of a chapel, where St Mary's Church now stands.

Not the biggest cask line-up on this occasion, a couple of lines being cleaned leaving a choice from the guests ales of Salopian 'Darwen's Origin' or the IPA from Cov...

There's an odd sculpture rising up to the balcony which I later learnt commemorates JRR Tolkien, resident nearby from 1896 to 1908. It was surprisingly quiet for an afternoon Wetherspoon's experience, making for an uneventful half-hour spent browsing through Tim's propoganda mag and enjoying the Byatts beer, which tasted stronger than its 5.5%.

I could have and should have hopped aboard another bus to reach the next pub, especially as I managed to take a wrong turn somewhere and ended up lost in the streets of Edgbaston.

Twenty-five minutes later I found myself outside The Old Moseley Arms, a pub that I'd intended to make it to for some time.

Old Moseley Arms (54 Tindal Street, Balsall Heath, Birmingham, B12 9QU)
This is a real gem. Which I've typically struggled to photograph outside due to parked cars and inside because...well, let's just say it had been a long day and the care-taken for quality pub pictures had diminished by this point.
Here's the great wood panelled bar counter in the right-side front room, the one to the left being a mirror copy but stretching further back.

Enville Ale, Butty Bach and HPA were on offer, but I wasn't going to turn down a pint of Bathams Best when given the opportunity in Brum. A great trad best bitter, which ended my day nicely.
Accompanied by a paneer bhuna from the Tandoori menu and Arsenal on an enormous screen just above my head.

That completed minor explorations of a bit of Birmingham that was new to me, although I appreciate I missed a couple of one-star heritage pubs, the place where UB40 first played and the chance to bit intrepid with some 'tastier' looking boozers.
Can't do everything - as I keep on being told.

The Bell at Upper Heyford

2025-04-16T09:29:00.000-07:00

We spent a sunny April afternoon in North Oxfordshire, ambling alongside the canal and across fields and visiting three village inns.
Various recent woes have limited excursions to pubs in the past five months, plus we're now in charge of this fella..

Or he's in charge of us...I haven't quite worked out the dynamics yet.

Making the most of the Spring sunshine, we decided to expand his pub experiences beyond the dog-friendly establishments of East Oxford, whilst I could tick one of the 3 Good Beer Guide Oxfordshire entries that I still haven't got around to visiting.

Here's the planned route...

The Great Western slow train to Banbury took us the 10-minutes from Oxford's dreary station to the rather more picturesque surrounds of Heyford station.

We followed the canal path northbound for twenty minutes, the view across the water of Manor Farm tithe barn and St Mary's church spire confirming we'd made it to Upper Heyford. The signage by the bridge confirmed we were heading the right way.

"Wet pub only, no food, beer garden, children + dogs welcome" - that'll do.
The Barley Mow is a short uphill walk through the village, located on the main road between the old bit of Heyford and the airbase. Despite being constructed of old grey stone, it's not what you'd call a picture postcard pub.

The Barley Mow (Somerton Road, Upper Heyford, OX25 5LB)
This place had a recent refurbishment in 2024 when Admiral Taverns acquired it from Fullers.
So what interesting beers has that change of ownership brought? Hmmm, London Pride.
And Marston's 'Wainwright' plus a third handpump which usually dispenses Tim Taylor 'Boltmaker'. A pint of Wainwright for me which was hovering around the NBSS 3 mark - quite passable but probably not enough being poured to rise it higher than this.

Sometimes I fail miserably to find an opportunity to snap a picture of the pub interior.
This was one of them...

We took our drinks outside to the pleasant beer garden, where most of the Saturday afternoon custom had gravitated. Not many of them mind - the canal folk seem to want feeding and appear to be waiting for The Barley Mow's kitchen to kick back into life.
No mild smut in the WCs where the decoration will please wildlife stamp collectors...

Suitably rested and refreshed, we moved on, walking back through the village, across the canal and River Cherwell. The path took us over rolling fields before depositing us a mile-or-so later at one end of the spread-out streets of Steeple Aston, where the blossom in the churchyard was looking good.

Steeple Aston is home to some 950 folks and used to have two pubs until the White Lion closed in 2012. That leaves us with the Red Lion.
Which is tricky to capture on camera due to being tucked away, the entrance and metalwork red lion above the door down that path between the buildings.

The Red Lion (South Side, Steeple Aston, OX25 4RY)
Once called The Chequers but renamed the Red Lion in 1830, this has been a pub since 1765 and a Hook Norton house for the past 20 years.
Step inside and there's a smartly furnished snug to the right and the main bar to the left. A handful of customers had situated themselves in front of the TV in the rear extension ready for the Grand National, a few others on tables on the terrace; no-one in the bar, where the log fire kept burning despite the hint of summer outside.

Three hand pumps dispense Hook Norton beers which have travelled the 12-miles south to be here.

An 'Off the Hook' IPA for me...lovely pint, impressive branded glassware...

We were watching the time a bit due to trains back to Oxford from Heyford only running every couple of hours. So we skipped the footpath option and stuck to the path that runs adjacent to the road back down to the canal and railway. Leaving ourselves ample time to call into Lower Heyford's pub, last seen in the Beer Guide in 2021.

The Bell (21 Market Square, Lower Heyford, OX25 5NY)
This is a Grade II listed village pub, built sometime around the turn of the 18th century, previously part of Oxford brewery Halls' estate.

Outside is parked the kind of car that us Oxfordshire folk always rock up to the pub in...

Inside, it's sadly quiet at quarter-to-five on a Saturday afternoon, just a couple of people outside and a group of friendly locals in front of the bar.

Something was amiss in The Bell. Several of the keg lines had glasses hung over them indicating they were off, whilst all the hand pumps had nothing on them and a blank space on the blackboard advertising "cask coming soon". I asked the chap behind the bar if they usually had real ale and was told that the management were pulling out and running down stock.
So I had one of these...

The solitary staff member later mentioned he was rationing the remaining blue paper towel and that the wifi had been turned off.
All a bit sad - a perfectly pleasant village pub which I hope enjoys a revival and picks up the custom from the villagers and canal folk.

We finished the day with a visit to The Grapes on George Street for some fine beer and footy on the TV, then strolled down the High Street and across Magdalen Bridge to the revitalised Oranges and Lemons in St Clements...

Oranges and Lemons (30 St Clement's St, Oxford OX4 1AB)
This pub did make an appearance on the blog in June last year when it was still called the Angel and Greyhound and was looking rather too quiet on a Friday evening.
Since then Youngs have left the building and it's now in the hands of the Morgan Pub Company and being run by the same folks as The Grapes.
It reopened after a refurb in Feb this year and appears to have been doing a great trade since then.

There was a great beer selection over the six pump clips in action on this visit, including regular Harvey's 'Sussex Best' and beers from Tiny Rebel, Windsor & Eton, Liquid Light, Brew York and Green Duck.
A lovely pint of the Nottingham-brewed Liquid Light 'Winter Song' session IPA to start with, then we lost track of time a bit with more cask and concoctions from Yonder and Vault City on keg.
Overall, a pub that's now an essential stop for beer aficionados on a visit to Oxford.

Next up: I'm branching out of Oxford for visits to Birmingham and Oswestry. Goodnight!

Award Winning Pubs in St Helens

2025-03-25T08:56:00.000-07:00

A few hours of a Saturday afternoon spent in the Merseyside town of St Helen's, where I had a plan to visit all the current beer guide entries - something which turned out to be less of a challenge than expected.

But let's start my report from St Helen's in...erm...the western suburbs of Wigan with a pint of Holts in a heritage pub.

The Springfield Hotel (47 Springfield Road, Wigan, WN6 7BB)
The pub was built in 1903 for local Oldfield Brewery. A great example of a brewery showing-off at the turn of the century, it features etched windows, dado tiles and mahogany bar counter.
We headed through the main door into a wide lobby with bar counter on our right, lounge to the left. The spacious bar occupies a central position from which the staff can serve you in the busier front room where the early Premier League kick-off was showing on TV, the lobby, or a rear corridor in front of an unfussy back room.

Holt's Bitter please.

Sanitiser top?

£8.85 for three pints - cripes, we'd paid almost that for one pint of Adnams in one of London's more expensive inns a few weeks prior to this.
That Adnam's 'Old Ale' was admittedly pretty good, but then so was the Holt's...

The Springfield was every bit the community pub on our visit, with a succession of folks passing through with carrier bags, face-painting setting up in the lounge and a table of cakes appearing next to the games room. All the activity and youngsters scuppered a wander with the camera, but I was content in our little space in the back, surrounded by pictures of Wigan in times gone-by.
We figured we'd upset an elderly lady by sitting at her usual table, but she must have forgiven us and got chatting as we stuck around and procured halves of the keg Holts 'Black' dark mild.

Having enjoyed a pleasant visit to this suburban Wigan gem, we walked back to the centre where there was time for another pint of Bass in the Swan & Railway prior to me diverting from the rest of the group.
Twenty-minutes on a Liverpool-bound train took me to St Helens.

The logical first point of call was directly opposite the Central Station, 2025 Good Beer Guide entry the Royal Alfred: "A large traditional pub with a friendly welcome".

Or perhaps not...

Yep, the Royal Alfred has the red 'temporarily closed' strip on its Google listing.
Quite how temporary, I'm not sure. Looks like it closed in its current incarnation in 2024 before the Guide hit the shelves.

So instead, I skirted around the north of the town centre, pausing to admire the Queen Vic statue and snap a picture of the town hall.

I navigated a busy roundabout named The Landings, then walked up North Road past the spectacular Church of St Mary, veering into the side streets to reach what was now my first pub stop.
Any disappointment that the Royal Alfred was closed was reduced by the knowledge that I had a Regional Pub of the Year and a former National Pub of the Year to visit.
Starting with the current regional champ...

The Turks Head (49 Morley Street, St Helens, WA10 2DQ)
It looked the business from outside: hanging baskets, mock Tudor, Tetley lamps and its own little turret in the corner. The entrance is along the side presenting a choice of turning left or right, although it turns out you can circumnavigate once inside, so no real jeopardy.

There were a massive 14 hand pulls spread over two sections of the bar.
Too many? I've known beer festivals to have less to pick from.
I ordered the one closest to me - a 'Pacific Gem' single-hopped pale from Rochdale's Serious Brewing Company. A dry, biscuity pale in good condition.

I couldn't fault the enthusiasm the bar staff had for the ale. A couple who proffered their liking for dark ales were encouraging to drink the Vanilla Stout faster in order for the fantastic North Riding 'Chocolate Fudge Cake', waiting in the cellar, to be put on faster.

With no tables spare I ended up propped on a stool at the end of the bar, getting in the way of anyone trying to see the beer blackboard.

The Turks Head is the winner of the 2024 Merseyside and Cheshire Pub of the Year, making it one of the 17 that was in contention for National POTY.
It certainly had a cheerful crowd of beer drinkers in when I visited, settled within sight of the TV in the front bar or eating in the cosier back room from a proper pub grub menu. You can also place an order for food to be brought across the road from the Cowley Grill, attached to the Cowley Vaults pub, which is where I was heading next...

The Cowley Vaults (50 Cooper Street, St Helens, WA10 2BH)
Just one door away from the Turks Head, the Cowley Vaults is a completely different looking pub owned by the same folks. I admired the basic tiled frontage, then stepped through the door into a much more rough 'n' ready basic open plan boozer. Pool table to the right with one fella playing himself; TV to the left showing the rugby.

Ah, it's St Helens on the telly, which explains the lack of a free table in the previous pub.
Rugby watch🏉: 30 minutes in and St Helens were leading Wakefield Trinity 6-12.

There was a much less daunting pick of five cask ales here: two Timothy Taylor and three local brews.
One swift half of Wily Fox 'Blonde Vixen' later, I found a route through streets lesser-trodden by St Helens tourists and rocked up outside the good lookin' Cricketers Arms.
2017 CAMRA National Pub of the Year.

Cricketers Arms (64 Peter Street, St Helens, WA10 2EB)
And stepped through the door into a hot and heaving wickedly busy pub. Hmm... I was beginning to see the folly of visiting the town pubs on a day when the St Helens away fixture was on TV.

The Cricketers was matching the Turks with another whopping 14 cask ales, plus pizza from a hut in the garden, cheese truckles and a brewery in the back yard (Howzat).

The beers were from the likes of Timothy Taylor, Thornbridge, 4Ts, Osset, Abbeydale and so on. Not that I saw the list until later, picking a 'Black Moss Stout' from West Yorkshire brewery Riverhead as it was right in front of me at the spot that I managed to squeeze in the bar.

I just visited at the wrong time, propping up an unused bit of the counter and still managing to get in the way there. This is somewhere I'd love to return to when it's a little quieter and I have the chance to sample the pizza and the home brew. Next time.

Rugby watch🏉: Wakefield 6 St Helens 20

Moving on, I made my way to Duke Street where the News Room was the next Beer Guide entry to tick off.
Except it wasn't.
This small bar appears to have changed its identity since the Merseyside CAMRA folks made their fateful beer guide selections for the town. The name was still the same but there was zero cask ale or anything of interest to drink. Just one table with cocktails in front of them in at the time that stood wondering if I had the right place, a staff member lurking in the back who didn't spot me, enabling a quick exit.

That left me with one more beer guide tick...The Lamb Inn which I'd passed earlier, so at least knew was open.

The Lamb Inn (113 Corperation Street, St Helens, WA10 1SX)
Built 1864, this sits on a street corner at the end of a two-storey terrace. It consists of two rooms within, either side of a central bar, everything tastefully renovated in 2022. According to the local paper it was feared lost forever prior to that renovation, having sat closed for some time with 'for sale' signs attached to the wall.

You can peruse the cask ale picks before going in, which was handy as the bar turned out to be another busy one with no change to study pump clips.

A Titanic 'Little Lamb' for me, a 3.8% light pale ale - although looking back at the choices now, I'm surprised I didn't pick the North Riding or Beartown.

🏉 Rugby update: all done & dusted - Wakefield 6 St Helens 26
Which meant things quietened down a little, giving me a table to myself as punters moved on, or relocated away from the screens to the garden.

With two less Beer Guide pubs than I had expected to visit I was feeling a little deflated.
Nothing like Wetherspoon's for a pick-me-up.

Glass House (Market Street, St Helens, WA10 1NE)
Converted from an indoor market and opened in 2000, this central St Helen's Spoons is named in connection with the town's links to the glass industry
There are two Wetherspoon Glass Houses in the UK, the other being in Norwich - don't send your app order to the Fens
The Wolf Brewery 'Granny Wouldn't Like It' had come all the way from Norfolk too, with other guest options from the more local Birkenhead Peerless Brewery.

I haven't captured it in a picture, but it was chaos in the Glass House. Too busy at the bar to get easily served when I arrived, so I grabbed a seat in the side room and ordered a Peerless 'Little Eye' and Veg Pizza with extra chilis by app. My pizza arrived before my beer. Then two beers instead of one, which would be a great bonus on occasion, but I really didn't need two this afternoon.
Then a drama unfolded outside the big windows as someone tried to evade capture by security guards and later the police, keystone cops antics getting the Spoons crowd cheering and popping outside for timely vape breaks and a closer look.

I called it a day on pub explorations in St Helens at this point - I'll await the 2026 Beer Guide and find out where I could have gone to make up for those two closed/revamped '25 entries.

But at that moment I had a return train trip to Wigan, a visit to the Brewhouse before its early closing time, craft in Wigan Central and a little more singing along to rock classics in the John Bull Chophouse to end the evening.
A great few days in the north-west.
Big thanks and a pint of beer next time I see him to Oxford CAMRA chairman John for coming up with the idea of visiting Wigan beer fest and driving us up the motorway to cause havoc in Greater Manchester. 🍺🏆

On the Wigan Ale Trail

2025-03-23T10:03:00.000-07:00

Day two in Wigan, as we awoke to a thick mist which had descended on the town overnight and obscured my view of the car park from the Premier Inn window.
Our Oxford quartet convened at a sensible hour and trekked to the surprisingly busy and hectic Wetherspoon's for a leisurely breakfast and several coffee refills.

By quarter-past 11 I realised The Anvil had been open for 15-minutes already.
What were we playing at?!

The Anvil (Dorning Street, Wigan, WN1 1ND)
This is a very proper-looking town centre pub, a big red brick affair with Tudor gables, located on a corner close to the bus station.
It had a fair few punters in for a pre-noon Friday, spread out over three drinking areas from the quiet end with a wall of CAMRA awards to the bright corner room with big TV and multiple satellite boxes.

The eight hand pulls served up some big brand brews alongside the local Moorhouse 'White Witch', and Chorley micro Ben's Brewery 'Mosaic'. I picked the 4.4% IPA from Heywood, Greater Manchester brewery Phoenix, an easy-going first beer of the day.

We took our drinks though to a table in the corner with red leather cushioned bench seating, dumpy stools and beer mats, Wigan rugby and football memorabilia adorning the walls, a chap reading his paper and a white wine-drinking lady pampering her poodle on the seat next to her.

There was a lesser-seen pairing of Maiden's Number of the Beast and cricket on the TV. Actually, the music was very rock for early doors. None of the clientele looked like they wanted to hear Metallica's 'One', not that they were taking much notice of it. I guess you need a bit of metal on the playlist when your pub is called Anvil.

Next to be marked off on the Ale Trail leaflet was a nearby micro in an alleyway in the Victorian Quarter.
It's been a while since my pub pictures were let down by scaffolding...

Tap 'n' Barrel (16 Jaxon's Court, Wigan, WN1 1LR)
We were afforded a friendly cheerful welcome at this former local award winner where we found a solid Lakes and Dales cask line-up of Hawkshead 'Pale', Abbeydale 'Deception', and Wensleydale 'Semer Water'.

One of our party skipped the sensible ales and delved into the fridge for a lunchtime 8.4% cherry chocolate imperial stout.

Seating in the ground floor room was limited to stools lining one wall, with the bar taking up a good bit of the space. There are tables upstairs, but who sits upstairs? So we gravitated to the bright patio area, covered and sealed to keep the cold out, heaters and old guitars attached to the walls.
The soundtrack was very 00's indie rock, with a bit of Bastille and Dandy Warhols. John may have an encyclopaedic knowledge of Thin Lizzy but was surprisingly blank on recognising The Killers when not one but two of their tracks drifted out the speakers.

Here's a random WC sticker picture...how did 1.FC Kӧln find their way to Wigan?

After visting those couple of venues we decided to make our way back to the Beer Festival.
This was Friday's vintage transport which put a smile on our faces, even if we were overtaken by a small child in an electric toy jeep on the bus station concourse.

After a mellow and easy-going afternoon session at the beer festival, we found ourselves back in the centre of Wigan.

A short walk from the bus station took us into a quieter part of town, where our next destination was a craft bar in the former British Legion building.

Real Crafty (9 Upper Dicconson Street, Wigan, WN1 2AD)
This was the Greater Manchester regional pub of the year in 2022 and appears to be the place to get your unusual Untappd check-ins. There were 30-or-so taps lining the back of the bar, necessitating some staring at the TV screens as the beer listing looped around.
I'm usually wary of any bar with an office-like suspended ceiling, but the beer selection more than excused this feature.

Ooooh! Cheesecakes reimagined as a beer, you say? From Nottingham's Neon Raptor? That'll do.
The 8% 'Love Taker' pastry stout may not have been the most sensible pick on this long day out, but it was quite marvellous. Should you prefer to stick with the cask, Marble, Ossett and Wigan Brewhouse provided the selection on this visit. Real Crafty is somewhere I'd linger for longer on a less full-on day.

But this was a full-on day and we were soon making a half-mile walk north along the side of Mesnes Park, on our way to another of Wigan's current Good Beer Guide entries.

Sherrington's (57 Kenyan Road, Wigan, WN1 2DU)
This was doing a roaring Friday evening trade with all tables on the ground floor and outside on the patio on a balmy March evening taken. That relegated us to sitting upstairs away from the action, which probably dampened my enthusiasm for the place a little. It certainly scuppered my photography, although no denying that the ale selection is fairly satisfying.

Cask ales on the bar were local Wily Fox 'Crafty Fox' and 'Dublin Up', alongside Bowness 'Swan Blonde' and Fyne 'Jarl'.
A half of Crafty Fox and a half of the keg 7% Rivington 'Monte Carlo's and El Dorado's' was my order. That'll be the strongest beer on offer - I'll never learn.

Gareth had spotted that we'd passed another venue on our Wigan Ale Trail leaflet on the walk to Sherrington's, although it had cunningly changed its name to confuse us.
Docs Alehouse had become the Yellow Monkey...

The Yellow Monkey (85 Mesnes Street, Wigan, WN1 1QJ)
We entered to the sound of Billy Idol, two dogs provided trip hazards, and there was a buzz of jovial conversation in this converted shop unit turned micro pub.

Cask ales on offer were a second sighting in a row of local Wily Fox 'Crafty Fox' an Fyne Ales 'Jarl'. Being as I'd just sampled the local brew, I opted for a pint of Argyll's finest, served in tip-top condition.

The two dogs greeting us on entry - or any of those on the patio at Sherrington's for that matter - were no match for this fella called Bobby, who'd made himself comfortable at the back of the Yellow Monkey.
No you ask him if he wouldn't mind moving so we can sit on the sofa...

I really enjoyed our time in this laid-back micro, chatting to the dog owners ("How much does Bobby eat? A shit-load"), enjoying the beer, stroking dogs and being treated to a decent music playlist.

That left us with a walk through the dark streets back into town, where we figured we'd tick off The Raven from the Ale Trail leaflet.

The Raven (5 Wallgate, Wigan, WN1 1LD)
Ossett 'Silver King' was my pick here, the other choices being Wainwright and Plum Porter. This may be a more pedestrian selection of ales than the places we'd been earlier (and the Bay City Rollers 'Give a Little Love' made for less appealing background music) but the Raven was well worth a visit. It featured some great green tiling on the corridor and wooden panelling around the seats we took in the front room, renovated and restored in 2012.
Not that I dared take any pictures, having been quizzed by the staff about why I'd snapped a photo of the pub from outside.

We still somehow found our way back to the John Bull Chophouse for a rock-sound-tracked end of the evening and that extra pint of Thwaites that would guarantee a fuzzy head in the morning.

Next up: one more Holt's heritage pub in Wigan and a quick side-trip on the train to St Helens.

Wigan - Beer Festival, Bass and Pie 'n' Peas

2025-03-16T03:22:00.000-07:00

Four go on an adventure to Wigan, in search of historic pubs and fine ales and a beer festival in a leisure centre.
We were making good time under blue skies on the M6, the only delay encountered being the predictable traffic jam circumnavigating Oxford, some 5-minutes after setting off. The rock playlist was curated by the man behind the wheel, John, who was going into great detail about when Richie Blackmore reached his peak.

I was spared the 8 minutes plus of Stargazer as we reached the final leg and needed to listen to the sat nav directions to deliver us to our car park by the hotel.

🕧12:30 - time to head to the Swan and Railway...

Swan and Railway Hotel (80 Wallgate, Wigan, WN1 1BA)
This is a great-lookin' red brick pub, built in 1898 by W.E.V. Compton. There is a pleasing mosaic floor displaying the hotel name in the doorway, with options of heading right into the narrow bar or straight to a corridor, with serving hatch, Victorian tiles, some great glasswork, staircase, and routes to two other rooms.

There were seven hand pumps on the bar, serving Bank Top 'Dark Mild' (first beer thumbs-up from one of our party), a stout from Brewsmith (I'll be back for that before closing time), pale ales from Pinnacle and Beerworks, a fruity collab between Ossett and Vault City, Black Sheep best bitter, and Bass🔺.
A great choice, but I hadn't had a pint of Bass in 2025, so started the day with two of 'em.

And a pie..

The only problem with the Swan and Railway was the danger that we may never leave. After all, we had a fine selection of beers, a seat by the fire, sport on the TV, a pie menu.

But we're more intrepid than that - and figured we'd be back. As it was, we met some of the team from the pub in the beer festival later and made a couple of revisits, getting chatting to the owners about their dedication to Bass and their recent acquisition of the Woodman in Birmingham. We also got a tip about sleeping with onions in your socks when you're coming down with a rotten cold...not tried and tested yet.

We didn't have far to go to the next destination - under the railway bridge, turn left and into the arch.

Wigan Central (Arch No.1 and 2, Queen Street, Wigan, WN1 4DY)
The station-style signage and giant blue locomotive on the window give a clue that they've embraced the railway theme here. They really have...railway carriage seating to one side, a bar in a bit of rolling stock, signs and historic pictures throughout, and wooden signals on the tables to indicate you're ready for service (didn't see this in action, so it may be a throwback to 20/21).

The Bank Top 'Signal' is the house beer, rebadged Flat Cap, alongside five other cask ales and some craft keg lines that I didn't even look at on this visit (again, we'd be back, drinking murky pale ale as a DJ souped up 80's classics at a thunderous volume in the side room on Saturday evening). On a quieter Thursday afternoon I picked a 4.2% pale called 'Outside the Frame' from the nearby Black Lodge Brewery.

Leaving Wigan Central, we ambled up Wallgate as far as one of the pubs on the local Ale Trail, a one-time Wigan Good Beer Guide Entry.

The Berkeley (27-29 Wallgate, Wigan, WN1 1LD)
Heading straight to the bar we found four hand pumps serving 'Wainwright', 'Cumbria Way', and Moorhouses 'Blonde Witch' and 'White Witch'.
The staff member was efficient and no-nonsense...
"What's the difference between the White Witch and Blonde Witch?"
"They're both popular".
You'd have been bold to ask for a taster.

We took our picks of the Moorhouse beers to a high table in the centre of the pub, asking ourselves 'how is this not a Wetherspoon's? The sprawling size of the place, the carpet, the layout and style of the furniture were all JDW-like, as was the impressive mid-afternoon crowd.
Looking above us at the closed upper floor, we pondered if the balconies and unusual pillars rearranged themselves overnight in a Hogwarts style...I fear we were knocking back the ale too fast and talking nonsense already - and we still had a beer festival to get to.

The clock had ticked past post-pandemic hotel check-in time (it's never going back to 2pm is it?), so we drank up, and got ourselves settled in our lodgings. A thirty minute 'freshening up' break - cup of tea, spot of a daytime TV quiz show, a glance at the local map to see how far it was to the pubs I wanted to visit - then we were back on the move.
A walk up Millgate took us to Winstanley Gardens and the Face of Wigan...

We were heading to the John Bull Chop House, which is situated on a cobbled lane to the side of the gardens. Although I suspect we'd have diverted here had we been headed anywhere else as soon as we heard Master of Puppets playing from the speaker in the doorway.

John Chop Brewhouse (2 Coopers Row, Market Place, Wigan, WN1 1PQ)
This is very much the rock pub to complement our in-car soundtrack on our journey up the motorway. As such, we ended up back here late on both Friday and Saturday nights - wild rumours may suggest that I did a little dance at some point. Cracking music and a great atmosphere when it was busy with customers in the night-time. Here, however, is the early doors photograph...

Timothy Taylor 'Boltmaker', Thwaites 'Gold', or Thwaites 'Brewhouse' were the cask ale choices on our visit. The malty, treacly, 4.3% American brown ale Brewhouse was delicious. A few of these were sunk on our consecutive visits.

We'd come to Wigan because of the beer festival with an enticing list of beers, so figured it was about time we made the effort to get there.
We hopped aboard the vintage bus which had been laid on as a shuttle between the town centre and the Robin Park Leisure Centre.

Situated beside a retail park and Wigan's football stadium, the leisure centre was an odd venue for the festival, with non-beer-quaffing folk doing healthy sporty stuff and posters advertising various medical clinics including, ironically, free liver scans.

The bar was split into light and dark halves - the dark side for me on Thursday evening, with a switch to the paler stuff on Friday. I started with Vocation 'Birthday Cake' milk stout from the wooden cask, complemented Clay Brow's 'The Hooded Monk' as having the best pump clip of the festival, and spent a while trying to decide whether or not I actually liked the draft red wine barrel aged 11% old ale from Romanian brewery Blackout. Yep, this was a festival that really did the craft keg justice.
Top marks for the value pie and peas available on the catering stall which nourished me well for two visits.

Wrapping things up/running out of tokens, we caught a bus back to the centre and popped back into the Swan & Railway for a nightcap that I probably didn't need.

I'll be back in Wigan for the next post as we continued to explore the pubs of the town.

Belgravia Pub Crawl

2025-02-06T12:34:00.000-08:00

On Saturday 1st Feb I headed to London where a group of folk from the one-time Central Southern Region CAMRA branches had organised a West London pub ramble.

Making good speed on the Oxford Tube, I found myself in Victoria with time to spare and Spoons crying out that a pre-noon pint would be the ideal preparation for the beery day ahead. It really probably wasn't, but never mind.

The Willow Walk (25 Wilton Road, Victoria, London, SW1V 1LW)
Handy for your £3.49 pint of real ale to prepare you for Wicked at the Apollo, The Willow Walk is a couple of minutes on foot from Victoria station, black cabs lined up in front of it.
Between 1954 and 1984 this site was part of the Wilton Road Woolworth's which had the longest store frontage in the whole of the chain. Record Rendezvous and the pick 'n' mix section are long gone, part of the building becoming a JD Wetherspoon's in 1999.

On this occasion there was a mini beer festival line-up on the bar featuring London breweries...

I ordered the By the Horns 'Foundry', a very drinkable 4.2% stout. After enjoying this pint, it was sad to read a couple of days later than the Wimbledon brewery has gone into liquidation.

Pints came in sturdy plastic cups, my neighbour at the bar asking the staff why this was (plus why are there three security guards on the door and a police van parked outside, for that matter).
"There's a CAMRA regional pub crawl passing nearby." Actually no, that wasn't the answer.

The chap turned to me when he didn't catch the actual reason.
"What did he say? Who's playing?"
"He said there's a march for Tommy Robinson."
"Oh, right. I'm an Ipswich fan myself."
???!

The meeting place for the pub ramble was Pimlico's marvellous Cask, which would be unlocking the doors at midday. As the clock was ticking towards that time, I strolled in that direction, stopping for supplies in Sainsbury's, reaching the pub at ten-past.

Cask Pub & Kitchen (6 Charlwood Street, Pimlico, London, SW1V 2EE)
A couple of steps through the door and I found myself at the end of an orderly long queue to the bar, a gaggle of folks from the Oxon, Berks and Bucks CAMRA branches waiting in line to peruse the hand pumps.

Credit to the lone member of staff who worked efficiently through this early customer influx and never showed any consternation that most of us wanted two half pints and a picture of the pump clips.

I followed the two halves trend, unable to narrow the strong choice of cask down to one single pint pick.
The Newbarns/Omnipollo 'Henok's Mild' was a top notch 5.2% mild, chocolate and roast malt flavours edging it towards a porter. Lined up next to this, I had the Heritage Brewing Co 'P2 Czar's Imperial Stout', deceptively smooth and easy-drinking for the 8% strength. Unsensible, maybe, but oh so nice.

Other than not being able to try all the beers, Cask made for a great meeting place for the participants on today's west London pub excursions.
It's a comfy place, those slanted front windows in the Grade II listed post-tower block Lillington Estate building giving this 60's pub some character.
The cask prices didn't break the bank (it's usually a diversion to the keg that does that for me).
And it has a great descent to the gents...

Cask was very much the outlier on the itinerary, necessitating a 15-minute walk to the next stop.

When I moved to London as a youthful whippersnapper, our next destination was one of the few places brewing beer in the capital. In a city dominated by Youngs and Fullers, Pimlico's Orange Brewery was a rare spot to drink beers concocted in the basement. I vaguely remember Orange Square, on which the pub is located - artisan market just packing up as we arrived. But I can't remember much about visiting the brewpub or if it was a bit more down-to-earth than the current incarnation.

The Orange (37 Pimlico Road, Belgravia SW1W 8NE)
Searching online I discovered a description of the latest refurbishment, detailing where the lampshades and fabrics had been sourced and how 'natural paint made from earth and mineral pigments' had been used.
Probably best not to expect rickety bench seating, spit and sawdust, and graffiti in the gents, then.

The Orange is a multi-roomed place- you can do a full circuit of the ground floor, taking in the characterful dining area to one side, seats by the fireplace, and staircase leading down to a subterranean 'Blood Orange Bar' or up to first floor bedrooms. £200 for the night, should I not be able to face that bus journey home.

There were two hand pumps on the bar, one turned around, the other being Allsopp's 'Pale Ale', served to us in continental handled mugs that made half pints look very small.

Moving on, we deviated from the suggested route, figuring we'd skip past a couple of small pubs that wouldn't be comfortable if all the CAMRA ramblers were to descend on them at once.
Another 15-minutes took us to a bit of a classic in Belgrave Mews...

The Star Tavern (6 Belgrave Mews West, Belgravia, SW1X 8HT)
The Star is famed as one of the 'famous five' pubs that have appeared in every edition of the Good Beer Guide, a blackboard by the staircase celebrating that achievement.
This Grade II listed pub dates back to 1864 and has hosted a colourful clientele over the years. John Profumo was reputed to have met up with Christine Keeler at the Star; Diana Dors, Peter O'Toole and Albert Finney also drank here.

In the sixties it was said that the well-heeled and celebrity clientele made themselves comfy downstairs, whilst a whole different set used the first floor library, most famously the collaborators planning the Great Train Robbery.

The cask ale choice at the bar was Fullers 'ESB' or 'Pride'.
Here's Michael by the upstairs library bar, making extensive tasting notes on his Fullers 'ESB'...

Or perhaps he's scribbling down his ideas for the next audacious heist to be dreamt up in the Library of the Star?

We finally had a shorter walk between pubs, trekking along the southern side of Belgrave Square to a pub hidden down a narrow cobbled street, featuring some fine foliage out front and evergreen window boxes.

Horse and Groom (7 Groom Place, Belgravia, SW1X 7BA)
The interior of the Horse and Groom is micro-size - five tables if I remember correctly, plus additional seating in an upstairs room that I didn't explore. It's a cosy, brown-hued pub, with wood panelling, and a wooden screen secreting the steps down to the WCs.

This is a Shepherd Neame house, giving us a choice of the familiar 'Whitstable Bay', 'Master Brew', or 'Spitfire'.

My 'Master Brew' was close to being past its best - the only significant beer quality dip of the day, whilst the 'Whitstable Bay' got a thumbs up from my drinking companions.
We perched on a handy vacant table in the corner, content in this classic west London pub, even if the TV showing the rugby was a little out of place in these surroundings.

It was a short walk back around Belgrave Square to reach the next pub on our list. We tested our flag knowledge en-route; then, on request, I took some photos of a young lady holding signs in front of one of the embassy doors, with no idea what sort of protest I'd become an accomplice in.
Tucked down (yet another) back street was The Grenadier...

The Grenadier (18 Wilton Row, Belgravia, SW1X 7NR)
This is somewhere that I visited in the not so distant past and covered on this very blog as a Halloween post. So, no need for me to go into detail here or recount why the ceiling is plastered in banknotes from around the globe.

My beer pick in the Grenadier was the house brew from Woodforde's of Norfolk, other options being Greene King 'IPA' or Tim Taylors 'Landlord'. The 'Grenadier Ale' was served in reasonable condition but far from the most exciting of best bitters.

Right: let's visit a London classic, with a set of strict rules.

The Nags Head (53 Kinnerton Street, Belgravia, SW1X 8ED)
Something went amiss with the photo of the frontage, as you can see above.
Could the Czar's Imperial Stout have finally caught up with me?

Set in another quiet side street, the Nags Head has a few outdoor tables, plentiful hanging baskets and a canopy labelled 'Kevin Moran'. Kevin - probably Mr Moran to me - is a former guardsman and actor who has created a set of rules for the pub, proclaiming himself 'Britain's strictest landlord' in an article in The Sun.

The upper front bar claims to have the lowest counter in London, and features a pewter beer engine with pink ceramic Chelsea Pottery hand pulls. Real ales came from Adnams with 'Southwold Best Bitter', 'Ghost Ship', and 'Old Ale' available.

Our fearsome host hurried along our orders (Old Ale for all) serving them in dimpled mugs and efficiently taking four separate payments being as we'd reached end of buying rounds.
"It's eight pounds a pint, cash only for anything under sixteen pounds," she instructed us.

"No, not up there, there's no seating up there - sit there!"

What with the 'no mobile phones' signage and insistence that coats be hung on pegs and not draped over chairs, we were all a bit overwhelmed as we settled on a table next to the fire and took in the plethora of vintage games machines, curiosities, memorabilia and old pictures around us.

"Hang on a minute...£8 a pint for a 4.1% beer?!" said John when the penny dropped a few minutes later.
WhatPub suggests considering the steeper end of London real ale prices as an admission fee for a unique gem of a pub, something I can't argue with.

Several of our colleagues from Oxford caught up with us here, as our own adapted route around the Belgravia pubs crossed paths with the original itinerary.
They got told off for moving a stool to a spot in front of the fire and told to squeeze in on the bench by the window instead. The last thing I heard as we departed and waved them goodbye was "did we just pay £8 a pint?!"

The 'Old Ale', by the way, was excellent, the whole pub experience the best of the day.

We had missed three suggested pubs compiled for the pub ramble (not a crawl... even at this stage, definitely a ramble!) but had now reached the end of the route and didn't have the inclination to back-track to the ones we'd skipped.
Instead, we opted to poke our heads into the second pub on Kinnerton Street.

The Wilton Arms (71 Kinnerton Street, Belgravia, SW1X 8ED)
Dating back to 1826, I suspect this would once have been as characterful an old inn as many of those we'd visited today. But from it's 'Card Only' sign to the bright airy uncluttered space, it's 50 meters yet a million miles from the Nags Head.
The latest refurbishment came in 2021 after Shepherd Neame let the pub go and it was taken over by a small gastropub group.

Cask ale on offer was Fullers 'London Pride' or Allsopp's 'Pale' - we picked the pale again, being as this is something we're less likely to see back home.

Most of the other custom were eating and we were the odd ones out without our shopping bags from exclusive West End boutiques.
If I came in the Wilton Arms by myself I'd probably have hated it, but good company usurped by grumbles. I'll even forgive the display of vintage Playboy covers - a pitiful attempt at mild smut in the gents...

Our day - or my participation in it, at least, as I headed for the bus stop afterward - ended in the Paxton's Head in Knightsbridge. An old gin palace dating back to 1900 with a superb central bar and lots of etched glass and wood panels.
Unfortunately the guest beer had just run out leaving us with an unexciting 'Abbot Ale' - we'd gone downhill as far as exotic beer choice was concerned since Cask at midday.

I extend my thanks to those who arranged this pub ramble, taking me to a few new pubs hidden in the streets of Belgravia, making for a lovely afternoon in London.

Giants and Woodmen - Cerne Abbas and Bridport

2024-12-12T04:14:00.000-08:00

I'm afraid that my dedication to the blog and all things pub has trailed off at the end of 2024.

"Stuff" has gotten in the way, as it does occasionally.

So instead of pubs adorned in Christmas decorations, I'm backtracking a few few weeks to catch-up and bring you a bit of mild smut ~~in the gents WC~~ on the side of a hill...

After an overnight in Dorchester and a return visit to Spoons for breakfast, I made the 8-mile trip north to the village of Cerne Abbas.
On such a grey miserable day. I appeared to have the place to myself, sensible tourists deciding to wait and visit at a time they could get their phallic chalk man pictures with blue sky backgrounds.

Extreme mud curtailed the footpath route to the Cerne Abbas brewery tap, forcing me to trek along the side of the A352.
Not a good bit of road to walk - I was happy to see the "Caution: concealed brewery entrance 300yds ahead". Wow - that's some bespoke road signage.

Turning into that concealed entrance, the brewery was down here somewhere...

A couple of farm buildings are located at the bottom of the leafy track, where a right-hand turn, navigating a puddle that was threatening to take on 'lake' status, led we to this rural brewhouse...

Cerne Abbas Brewery Tap (Chescombe Barn, Barton Meadows Farm, Dorchester Road, Cerne Abbas, DT2 7JS)
The brewery was founded in 2014 in smaller premises, moving to this new home at the Barton Meadows Farm in 2019. They pride themselves on brewing using green sand-filtered water (ideal for beer and once making brewing a big business in these parts) and local barley from the Cerne Valley. The taproom puts on evening sessions for the villagers, live music, special events, and food from the appealingly named 'Papa Cheese' on a Saturday.

As is my habit, I miss all that kind of cheese and music excitement and call in when the only people in the building are the brewer and his visiting accountant.

They still had a 'closed' sign hung over the draft beer tap, worrying me for a moment that I'd made a wasted roadside trek, but all was well, my arrival providing a break from the spreadsheets.
I could buy a t-shirt, some bottles, indulge in the impressive selection of boxed ciders or the racked beers on gravity. Soundtracked by Heart FM, unfortunately.
'Blonde', 'Styrian Wolf', and 'Cnut' (who plundered the local monastery 1,000 years ago), were the available ales.
I sank into a big sofa by the door, supping a crisp, fruity, Styrian Wolf.

The brewery tap featured some proper rustic Gents WCs...

If it's raining, you're gonna get wet while you wee.

Leaving the taproom, I back-tracked to the village of Cerne Abbas where I had a half-hour to explore the picturesque streets and look at the remnants of the Abbey before the pub opened. The Abbey was established in 987 and was the focal point of the area for 500-or-so years before Henry VIII unleashed his wrecking ball.

Here's the old Abbot's Porch...

I'm not entirely sure I got my £2.50 in the honesty box value-for-money from a few minutes spent wandering around the courtyard of what's left of the Abbey, but never mind.

It took me to 12noon and the Giant Inn was unbolting the front door.

The Giant Inn (24 Long Street, Cerne Abbas, DT2 7JF)
This was formerly the Red Lion, hence the two-in-one pub sign (top picture on the post).
There are three pubs in Cerne, a significant drop from the whopping 14 this village once boasted.
The Good Beer Guide led me to the Giant Inn, but I suspect I'd have been drawn to it anyway with the eye-catching Victorian frontage.

Inside, they were prepping for imminent lunch arrivals with plenty of reserved table signs, mildly surprised to see my eagerly early arrival. Real ales on the bar were Exmoor 'Fox' or Butcombe 'Rare Breed' - the Fox for me, in decent condition for the first pour of the day.

Apologies to Cerne, but I wasn't compelled to hang around and sample the other two pubs on this quiet and dull day.
Instead, how about an afternoon in Bridport, where I wanted to visit the Woodman, one of 17 pubs on the 2024 CAMRA Pub of the Year longlist.

Before that though, I nipped into the Bridport side streets to the Tiger...

The Tiger Inn (14-16 Barrack Street, Bridport, DT6 3LY)
Now this was more like it.
A warm and welcoming main room - lots of dried hops - pump clip adorned beams - other customers besides me (now that's a novelty!)

The view to the pump clips was obscured by the sit-at-the-bar blokes and I can't quite remember what the choice was. But I do know that my Greene King 'Blood Orange' was marvellous. A smooth chocolate orange stout brewed in collaboration with Nethergate.

This 18th century inn is wet-led, attracting a half dozen midweek afternoon drinkers when I visited. The attention of the locals was devoted to the bar staff who'd just returned from holidays in warmer climes and was regaling them with tales of events with bottomless Prosecco and the ensuing carnage.

Onward, to the Woodman...

The Woodman Inn (61 South Street, Bridport, DT6 3NZ)
This is a bit of a regular award winner, currently crowned the 2024 Wessex CAMRA Regional Pub of the Year and the 2024 Regional Cider Pub of the Year.

Of course, I'd really like to have visited on a raucous evening, but that didn't pan out. A friend claimed to have been there when the effects of the rustic cider had caused the old boys to need to steady themselves against the wall as they navigated the pub.
Just a couple of solo drinkers in on my visit, both able to get to the bar without the floor spinning out from under them.

There was an impressive and varied cask choice made up of: Five Points 'Railway Porter', Swannay 'Scarpa Special', Thornbridge 'Woodlands', Downlands 'Best' and - my pick - Colbier 'Intermission', all the way from Merseyside.

The music selection provided something a little bit different: some cosmic psych from the, previously unknown to me, Black Rainbows.

This was a thoroughly pleasant pub that I could quite happily have settled in for the rest of the day. But I'd finished the local Giant's Pint CAMRA mag, so would have needed a good book on this occasion - no earwigging of other people's conversations to keep me entertained here...

But sadly I had places to be and couldn't wait for the crowds to descent on the Woodman.

That's two short visits I've made to Bridport pubs, which is a shame as I'm sure there is a cracking evening or two to be had in this Dorset town.

A Dorchester Dawdle

2024-12-09T07:42:00.000-08:00

An overnight in Dorchester - the Dorset version, rather than the one on the Thames.

It has been ten years since I last visited Dorset's county town. Back then, the brewery quarter was a construction site, but in 2024 the former home of Eldridge Pope was looking rather majestic despite the obvious disappointment that it's no longer a brewery and there is no Thomas Hardy barley wine being bottled here.
The grand old brewhouse is now surrounded by chain restaurants and lounge bars, a gym, hotel, and swanky shops.
Happily, there is still some brewing going on, albeit on a small scale.

In a shiny modern building adjacent to Dorchester South railway station, the Copper Street Brewery was established in 2018. Probably not photogenic at the best of times - but I've gone all-out to disappoint with the picture, capturing some big reflective windows...

Copper Street Brewhouse and Taproom (8 Copper Street, Dorchester, DT1 1GH)
On a mid-week afternoon, I expected to have this place to myself. Hence the surprise to find it bustling with a wide range of folk, relegating me to a perch on the window ledge with a stack of empty barrels getting in the way of any chance of comfort.
This is basically a micro pub with a hatch to the side of the bar providing a view of some brewing kit. Features included canine trip hazards, clutter in the sole WC, and a shelf of cans and bottles that you'd have to squeeze past the cheery, boozy blokes to get to.

On the bar counter were two casks, whilst the blackboard listed a handful of keg options including their own Saxon lager and guest beers. I wanted something brewed on-site, so picked the cask Copper Street 'Aethelwulf', a sturdy 5.7% dark mild concocted for the Weymouth beer festival.

Whilst I would rather have liked a proper seat, this was a great little spot and a fine first beer to start my short Dorchester tour.
Moving on, I made the 8-minute stroll into the town centre and checked into my accommodation for the evening - the Old Ship.

I was staying in seemingly the only pub in town that didn't serve real ale, which was a bit of a let-down.
But it was a lot cheaper than the ambitious off-season Premier Inn prices and met my simple requirements for a night (roof, bed, TV to switch on and instantly fall asleep in front of).

Bag dropped off, I made Beer Guide regular Tom Browns my next port of call.

Tom Browns (47 High Street East, Dorchester, DT1 1HU)
This is now under the ownership of Oxfordshire pub group Oak Taverns, whose pubs appear in a few of my blog posts this year.
I just need to find my way to the Old Crown at Ebley, Stroud, to complete the lot.

I bowled in through the front door, looking forward to the revelry within...
Hmmm...

Yes, PropUptheBar, not for the first time, fails to visit places at their liveliest and best.
At one point the member of staff popped outside when he spotted friends passing by, leaving me with the whole place to myself.
But who needs a crowd when you've got an Uncut magazine soundtrack (Broken Bells...Alt J...Foster the People) and five cask beers to pick from. These came from from Langport, Dorset Brewing Company and Piddle. As Dorset BC brew a beer specially for the pub, I opted for the 'Tom Browns' trad best bitter.

Sat on my lonesome, I ventured to Google, deciding to look up who Tom Brown was to add some informative content to the blog. Unfortunately, the top result was a 25-year-old homeless chap sentenced for possession of a firearm. Which I suspect may not the Tom Brown the pub and beer are named after.

Right, let's move on to a micro down an alley...

Convivial Rabbit (1 Trinity House, Trinity Street, Dorchester, DT1 1TT)
Uh-oh, another quiet pub visit. The crowds had swelled to four in Tom Browns when I left, but I found myself only the second punter in the 'Rabbit. Things promised to pick up later with a number of tables reserved for the Dorchester crib players at 7:30pm, but I'd be gone before I had the chance to see how frivolous the crib crowd get.

The beers were listed on a board above the bar and fetched (very slowly) from a side room somewhere. Quantock 'Quest for the Holy Grale', Nottingham 'Dreadnought', Cerne Abbas 'Ale', and Saltaire 'Big Table' made for a respectable choice.

The Quantock pale for me - an enjoyable pint in fine condition, from a brewery that always seem to do the business.
The Convivial Rabbit was a nice place - on the larger end of the 'micro' pub scale, with quality beer at reasonable prices. But with no music and no crib players to liven things up, I'm afraid my time here was a little bit dull.

In the search of action, it was time to move on to the guaranteed crowds of Spoons.
The Dorchester branch is located on the traffic-heavy High Street West, in a former coaching inn with arched entrance leading through to what would once have been the stable yard.

The Royal Oak (20 High West Street, Dorchester, DT1 1UW)
This is a bit of a mix of Spoons styles - smaller rooms at the front, the design dictated by the historic hotel layout, whilst the bar is in a modern rectangular extension to the rear - Spoons-by-numbers as far as the design and furniture are concerned.

The Royal Oak offered a quality range of guest beers to pick from, from which I chose the Salopian 'Disintegration', a 5.1% strong pale ale that was crying out to be described as 'chewy'.

One pint and Fiesta burger with mushy pea side later, I was ready to set off to the Brewhouse and KItchen. Only to discover the weather had taken a turn and it was hammering down on a dank Dorset evening.
So I scrapped the B&K plan and dashed a few meters down the road to my accommodation.

Old Ship Inn (High West Street, Dorchester, DT1 1UW)
Sadly, not quite so 'old' inside, with some ghastly wallpaper, polished wooden floors, TVs on for the sake of it, and typical town pub decor.
On the plus side - there were a nice couple of model ships on display.
And I was treated to a rousing singalong to Frank's 'That's Life' from the (possibly quite tipsy) locals around the pool table in the rear section.

A little less action around my chosen seat by the windows...

Sadly, no surprise handpumps to prove WhatPub wrong.
No silly strong craft beers or lethal dry-as-a-bone Dorset ciders.

So my evening in Dorchester ended on this smoothflow classic...

Belgian Beer in Bishop's Stortford

2024-11-07T12:46:00.000-08:00

In which I find myself with a couple of hours to spare in the Herts town of Bishop's Stortford, late on an Autumnal Saturday afternoon.
I figured that should be ample time to get around the 2025 Beer Guide entries.

Going against convention, my first pub picture is of somewhere that I didn't actually set foot in.
But just look at the Nags Head...a stunning art deco design to match Nottingham's finest...

As visually appealing as the place looked, I didn't want to deviate from my plan and miss the town centre beer guide ticks. Plus, a quick glance at Untappd suggested this wasn't a secret real ale destination.

Barry F has checked in Fosters lager 781 times to date.
Four stars every time and I bet he's never had to return a dodgy pint of it, like us suckers on the cask.

Just up the road from the Nags, around a mile out of town, was my first destination - a brewery in an industrial estate next door to the Gui pudding factory.

Belgian Brewer (Links Industrial Estate, Bishop's Stortford, CM23 5NZ)
The eponymous Belgian Brewer grew up in Belgium before moving to the UK aged 21. Presumably unimpressed with Fosters in the Nags and the continental bottles available in the supermarket, they set about brewing trad Belgian styles in the home counties, establishing the brewery in 2018.
It's your typical industrial estate brewery tap from outside - big rectangular building, red shutters, gazebo, planters, portable bar in a trailer. Inside, it has a fair bit of character and I rather liked it. A friendly welcome. Great selection of beers. And a fine collection of Lowlands breweriana attached to the chipboard walls.

There were a fair few people in, most of whom seemed to know one another; a couple of chaps in their purple Bishop's Stortford FC shirts (I trust the Blues are doing better than last year).

Unusually, I stayed sensible with such a choice of high ABV beers on offer, ordering the mildly hopped, floral pale ale. The brewer's lowest strength beer at 5.6%.
A couple of stronger ones went into the backpack for later.

It was time to move on and explore the town centre.
Bishop's Stortford is home to around 41,000 folk and - if I'm counting correctly - a pretty hefty 16 pubs.

The one I was heading to was through dimly lit side streets, the multi-coloured lights of The Castle luring me toward it.

The Castle (38 Castle Street, Bishop's Stortford, CM23 3TG)
Wow - this was a buzz of activity when I opened the front door - a contrast to the quiet street I was coming in from. All the tables were occupied in the main room, conversations in full flow, lots of laughter, nobody paying any attention to the football on the TV screens. The pub dog came to check me out, found me thoroughly uninteresting, and wandered back to his spot in the corner.

The two cask ales on offer came from Wharfe Brewery (formerly Red Fox) and Royston's Buntingford Brewery.
I felt a bit guilty ordering the Wharfe 'Leading Light' when it took forever to pour ("it's a lively one").

Then took this through to the snug to one side, the only place with a table free. It's a nice little room with a bit of bench seating and a hatch to the bar to save you making the ten steps around the corner. A room spoiled by the group of blokes who insisted on shouting to each other at full volume and were very, very rude about Angela Rayner.

Next up, a stroll along residential Portland Street, down to Market Street, then 'round the corner to The Star.

The Star (7 Bridge Street, Bishop's Stortford, CM23 2JU)
Now we're into proper ancient pub territory, with this inn dating back to 1636. Not that you'd necessarily know once inside, as this has had a refurb or two to turn it into a town centre all-rounder.
There was an impressive beer line-up...Pride, Proper Job, Hobgoblin, Oscar Wilde mild, and two Brentwood brews. Neat little luggage tags; no jam jars.

I picked the Brentwood 'Beer Outta Hell' - of course I did, it's a chilli and ginger porter. Nice enough, but I would have heaped a bunch more ginger and chilli into the mix.
The Star is laid out in a U-shape with a courtyard out back. The right side was a bit more pubby yet, after doing the rounds, I perched on a stool in the brightly lit bit with sofas, wooden beams, Everton on the telly, and excessive Halloween decorations.

All in all, The Star is a pub I could have happily spent longer in. There was a ridiculously cute puppy to detract from the Premier League, a Vampire Weekend soundtrack, a relaxed Saturday evening vibe, and the beer was in good nick.

I failed on my original mission for Beer Guide completion of the town.
Necessitating a return visit for the Sports Trust club bar and an opportunity to investigate what the Nags Head looks like inside.
Instead, I took the easy option of finishing the evening in Spoons.

The Port Jackson (Riverside Wharf, Bishop's Stortford, CM23 3GN)
This is a purpose-built JDW in the complex of Italian chain restaurants and apartments constructed next to the swans on the River Stort. The Port Jackson first opened the doors in April 2014, although - once inside - this didn't feel like somewhere which was a building site ten years ago.
WhatPub suggested it was hit and miss in regards to cask ale excitement, so I guess I struck lucky with a couple of dark Halloween-themed guest ales at £1.99 a pint. The Nethergate 'Complete Howler' was a wonderful warming dark ruby porter on top form.

The main bar features a grand old staircase with a balcony level. Very peaceful and quiet upstairs when I wandered up there, although there must have been some wrong-uns a little earlier when half a dozen HP Brown Sauce packets rained down on my neighbour.
Saturday night in Bishops Stortford - it's a jungle out there.

With four pub visits, that was the end of my explorations for the time being.
With Belgian beers, back-street locals, and a couple of decent dark beers drunk, I'd passed a pleasant couple of hours in the town.
Unfortunately, not finding lots to complain about scuppers the planned 'Bashing the Bishop' post title.

Halloween Post - The Hatchet inn

2024-10-31T00:45:00.001-07:00

It's that time of year again where there's a crate of pumpkins in the supermarket, Film 4 are showing Scream, and I'm struggling to find a haunted pub worthy of a Halloween post.

My travels took me to Bristol, to a pub that once had pirates and ne'er-do-wells as customers, plus ghostly occurrences on the upper floors and things that go bump in the night.
Unfortunately, it didn't feel at all creepy when I visited on a sunny October afternoon.

The Hatchet Inn (27 Frogmore Street, Bristol, BS1 5NA)
One of the oldest pubs in Bristol, this dates back to 1606 and has seen four decades of colourful characters propping up the bar, from pirates to bare-knuckle boxers, to hairy 80's rockers.

Let's start with the front door - as good a place as any to start when you arrive at a pub.
The gruesome claim to fame is that the 300-year old thick wooden door is covered with the human skin of executed criminals.

Quite why anyone would want to add a layer of skin to the front door, I'm not sure. And no-one has ever actually scraped away the black paint to scientifically prove or disprove the story.

But Bristol has form with this kind of thing...in 1821 a young chap called John Horwood threw a rock at a girl he was infatuated with, causing her to die several days later from her injuries. Horwood was hanged, then his skin was removed, tanned, and used to bind the notes from his trial. The book now sits in a display in the M Shed museum.

The Hatchet Inn was also supposedly the chosen local of Edward Teach, better known as pirate Blackbeard, who'd knock back a few ales before heading off to plunder ships in the Caribbean.

There were all sorts of nefarious activities in the Inn in days gone by...
🐀 Rat Pit
🐔 Cock Fighting
✊ Bare knuckle boxing
A handful of symbols that have been phased out of the Good Beer Guide over the years.

So, what of the haunting? Objects move of their own accord, hands brush by staff in dark corners, footsteps can be heard treading the boards in empty rooms.
Paranormal investigators have visited in the hope of seeing the bare knuckle boxer who is said to pace the upper rooms, or catch a glimpse of a ghostly woman mournfully crying as she wanders the building.

Thanks to an expensive makeover a few years back, the pub is fairly shiny inside, not offering the cobwebs and uneven floorboards and cracks in the wall that I like in my ancient inns.

The old boys in the corner were sinking pints of Doom Bar when I visited. Robinsons 'Trooper', St Austell 'Tribute', and the local Wiper and True 'Kaleidoscope' were the alternatives, my pick of the Kaleidoscope being a well-kept and tasty pale ale. The Hatchet is a decent city centre pub with an interesting past that is well worth a visit.

Whilst in Bristol thinking about haunted pubs, I may as well trek the short distance to King Street where you'll find another ancient inn with a ghost or fifteen...

The Llandoger Trow (5 King Street, Bristol, BS1 4ER)
Built in 1664, this is another ale house boasting some famous customers - Robert Louis Stevenson is said to have based The Admiral Benbow from Treasure Island on the 'Trow. Daniel Defoe met Alexander Selkirk whilst drinking in the pub, a shipwrecked sailor who spent four years on a desert island and would be an inspiration for Robinson Crusoe.

There are a whopping 15 ghosts associated with the pub, as identified when the crew from TV show Most Haunted came to investigate.
The upper floor is said to be the the most haunted - including a young boy with a metal leg support clanking across the floorboards
Angry ghosts have pulled pictures off the wall and tossed utensils around the kitchen. The Jacobean room and the cellar are both said to have haunted cold spots ('drafts' to the paranormal non-believers).

The Trow is a pub that I do like: photogenic timber-framed frontage, flagstone floor, grand fireplaces, nooks and crannies...and some fine beer and cider.
Cask ales on this visit were from Theakston, Adnams, and Bristol Beer Factory. Apart from the hand pumps, there is a hefty draft menu on a blackboard, offering a fair few German brews, plus sours and nitro stouts, and crafty pales.

I opted to brave a still dry cider called 'Brain Twister', hoping it wouldn't live up to the name later in the day.

Another year, and more haunted pubs that prove not to be at all spooky when I visit.
But for those who enjoy this time of year...happy Halloween 👻

Look out...the ghostly decorations will come down in the pubs and the Christmas ones will pop up before we know it. And that is scary.

Edmonton Green, you'll always live on in my dream

2024-10-28T12:59:00.000-07:00

The previous post found me wandering the streets of Marylebone and visiting four pubs with wildlife-themed names - Eagles, Jackolopes, Stags, and Horses (do horses count as wildlife?)
My plan for the rest of the day was to travel into the northern suburbs. But before descending into the tube at Euston, I wanted to poke my head into a recent addition to the Wetherspoon portfolio - the Captain Flinders having first opened the doors to the public in January 2024.

Captain Flinders (34-38 Eversholt Street, London, NW1 1DA)
The pub is named after explorer Captain Matthew Flinders who was the first person to circumnavigate Australia in 1801-03. The link to Euston is that his grave ended up lost under the expansion of the railway station until being uncovered during the recent redevelopment works. So, we may never get a fast train direct into Euston station on HS2, but at least our extortionately expensive rail project means Captain Flinders gets a more respectful burial place and a Wetherspoon's named after him.

I'm a big fan of the tiling at the entrance..

But I wasn't so keen on the central London Spoons prices.
Strangely enough, my Portobello 'Market Porter' was less than the advertised rate, which I'm not complaining about.

By Spoon's standards, this is a pretty small place. It's a single room, divided into three by the chunky wood panelled pillars that stretch the length of the pub. It was certainly busy on my visit - blokes sitting doing the crossword; the rowdy lads by the front looking like they were on the start of a big afternoon out; and - unsurprisingly - lots of folk with luggage at their side.
I sat next to some very cultured art work and enjoyed my fine London porter.

From Euston, I made an eight mile trip northeast. Firstly on the underground to Tottenham Hale, continuing on the overground to Edmonton. This part of the capital is home to some 615,000 folk, yet I've never had cause to visit before and know nothing about it.

The northern part of is known as Lower Edmonton or Edmonton Green, the southern part as Upper Edmonton - which is surely the wrong way around?!
Chas and Dave released a 1983 song called Edmonton Green, from which I really hoped to score a better blog post title.

Here's my walking route...crikey 2-miles - it's healthy this pub crawling lark.

The route took me past the initial scruffiness of the shops by the railway bridge on Church Street, then past the splendid green tiled frontage of the Old Hammam and Spa,

Onto the long suburban streets of semi-detached houses.

Fifteen minutes after leaving the station (timing includes crossing the traffic lights twice after departing from the station in the wrong direction towards the shopping centre) I reached the Rising Sun.
With some magnificent old Taylor Walker lights...

The Rising Sun (243 Winchester Road, Lower Edmonton, N9 9EF)
The doorway takes you through to a porch with a conundrum of turning left or right, the pub being divided into two sections by a wooden partition. I went right into the livelier half with pool table and locals sat at the bar singing along to Catatonia's 'Road Rage'.
Somewhere, hidden by the bar blockers, were hand pumps for Old Speckled Hen, Hophead, and something from Buckinghamshire brewery Vale.
I had the Vale. I never did see the pump clip so I'm not sure what it was.
This one...

It turned out the other half of the pub was a comfier option, allowing me to settle on a cushioned bench at the far end.
The Rising Sun is a splendid pub - just the right amount of clutter to make it interesting, a well-worn carpet, and beamed ceiling. Despite being quiet when I sat down and took the picture it quickly filled up whilst I was there, doing a good trade with prams, dogs, and locals livening things up.

Making my way to the next Good Beer Guide pub in Edmonton, I crossed the busy A10, strolled through Bury Lodge wetlands, then followed a footpath along Salmons Brook. It all sounds much nicer than it really was - not a classic urban walk. But the route took me to the Beehive with its Madri umbrellas and grey-painted frontage.

The Beehive (24 Little Bury Street, Lower Edmonton, N9 9JZ)
This was much quieter than the Rising Sun. Alongside me, there was just one table of folk, plus a couple of dog walkers who arrived to take their regular spots at the bar.
There was a Rev James or Greene King IPA on offer for the traditionalists. Plus three unusual beers from home counties micros. A Brentwood 'Falcon Punch IPA' for me - another super beer from a brewery that rarely lets me down.

I've filled the blog with a variety of pictures from the gents, usually featuring mild smut.
Plus the occasional photo of a beer barrel urinal or some ambitiously scented handwash.
But this is a first...there's an iguana in the gents!

Initially I felt very sorry for Blue (for that is her name), destined to sit and watch blokes in the toilet. But the sign tells us that this is just a hide out which she has access to from a vivarium outside. I still utilised the urinal furthest away, out of respect.

Leaving the Beehive, it was a straightforward early evening saunter through the streets to Winchmore Hill. No disrespect to the Rising Sun and Beehive, but it was the next micropub, shortlisted for the CAMRA Pub of the Year award, that had brought me this part of London.

Little Green Dragon (928 Green Lanes, Winchmore Hill, N21 2AD)
In a show of dedication to the micro pub cause, Little Green Dragon owner Richard made a charity cycle ride around 100 micros before opening his own in August 2017.
Which is probably a good bit research on how to do it right - the Little Green Dragon was crowned Greater London Pub of the Year in 2018 and has won that title 5 more times since then.

The drinks choice offered four cask ales (pale, red, dark), key kegs, cider and perry, Old Bakery gin, and prosecco. Something to suit all tastes.

My taste was for a Hammerton 'Piece of Cake'.
Fudge cake stout..mmmm!

The pub has a range of typical micro high tables with a home-made look, plus regular tables, sofas, beer barrels acting as stools...

I sunk into the sofa and made myself comfortable enough to decide to stick around for a half of the Bluestone 'Red of Heaven'.
Next to the bar is something a little bit different to perch on, with some repurposed bus seating. You;ll find an electronic display board above this table which shows the next departures from the local bus stops.
Which was handy, as I had no idea how to get home from here.

I ambled down the road in the dusk.
Contemplating visiting the one-time Wetherspoons, but instead found my way to a cracking looking pub in the side streets...

The Orange Tree (18 Highfield Road, Winchmore Hill, N21 3HA)
This used to be a regular Beer Guide entry, but has dropped out since 2022. I suspect a real ale choice of Greene King IPA and 'Yardbird' weren't going to be attractive to the local CAMRA folk (two more handpumps turned around this evening, so perhaps the range is sometimes more enticing).
BUT - the Yardbird tasted great. And I never thought I'd be praising a Greene King Yardbird.

A nice pub: large, full of character, a fair few customers around the corner. Lots of interesting decorations, such as the run of Toby jugs above the bar.
Just a pity it was too dark for me to manage any decent pictures.

To be honest, I was more focused on how I was going to get home than on getting good pics for the blog. It was a fairly long bus ride down Green Lanes, then onto the tube to Victoria, before I even started contemplating getting back to Oxford. Via a doze on the Oxford Tube, I suspect.

Four Pubs in Marylebone and Fitzrovia

2024-10-27T04:11:00.000-07:00

An excursion to London, where I planned to take in a handful of central Good Beer Guide pubs before making my way out north to visit a micro short-listed for CAMRAs next national pub of the year award.
I made the familiar Oxford Tube journey...although it always seems to have gone up £1. And I always think we must be about there, only to look up from my book and discover we're stuck in a traffic jam at Hangar Lane. And I always manage to bang my head when negotiating the stairs.
Alighting at Marble Arch, I wandered into the streets of Marylebone, where my first lunchtime destination awaited.

The Golden Eagle (59 Marylebone Lane, London, W1U 2NY)
This is a marvelous 19th century corner pub, first licensed in 1842, then rebuilt in 1890. It has been run by the same family for over 30 years.
And it's a proper classic central London boozer... No food. Cordoned-off area for be-suited outdoor vertical drinking. Piano singalongs three evenings a week.

Cask ales on offer came from Fullers and St Austell, plus the Mauldons 'Pale Ale' from Essex, which was my light, easy-going pick.

I settled on the wall-hugging cushioned bench seating in the corner, next to a couple in Ajax shirts who'd already amassed a hefty collection of shopping bags by midday.
Shame that I wasn't here in the evening for the piano sing-a-longs. I had to make do with Whitney Houston, Little Mix, and John Lennon's 'Imagine', which seemed a bit out of place amongst the pop.

Here's the carpet for BRAPA...

And the mild smut for me...

A great pub and a tasty first pint of the day. The Golden Eagle was filling up as I departed, with a few hi-vis jackets and office folk taking pints to the pavement drinking area.
I had an 8-minute stroll to a pub in the mews...

The Jackolope (43 Weymouth Mews, London, W1G 7EQ)
This was built in 1777 and was called the Dover Castle in a previous incarnation, the name still visible in the etched glass of the windows. For many years it was a Sam Smiths pub, but now it is run by the same company who look after the Euston Tap.

So, plenty of tempting options beer-wise, as you'd expect if you've been to the 'Tap.
Cask from Five Points, Moberley Brew House, Marble and Iron Pier.
The likes of Köstritzer Schwarzbier and Budvar on keg; Stone or 40ft Brewing Co, if you were feeling especially wealthy.

I ordered a superb pint of Iron Pier 'Joined at the Hop', brewed with First Gold and Ekuanot.
And settled on the stools and ledge by the front window, jazz sound-tracking my visit.

The Jackolope features a Thai restaurant in the basement - cue a few folk wandering in and looking lost, before being pointed down the stairs by the barman.

The aromas drifting up from the kitchen smelt delicious, but I was determined to make do with a Tesco meal deal and push-on with the pub excursions.
It wasn't far to the next destination and - wow! - what a building...

Stag's Head (102 New Cavandish Street, London, W1W 6XW)
The pub sits on the ground floor of a grand late-30's Deco building. The Stag's Head was designed for William Younger & Co of Edinburgh, filling the single rectangular room with wooden panels and pillars. The effect of which was slightly diminished by the dominant Pimms flags on this occasion.

Two cask ales were on offer, both from Tring: 'Side Pocket for a Toad' or 'Squadron Scramble'. I took a Squadron Scramble to the perches opposite the bar. Decent enough beer, but the only one of the the day that veered north of the £6 a pint price point (I'd been pleasantly surprised that the previous two pubs were no more expensive than Oxford).

There was a good retro soundtrack of Toto, Frankie goes to Hollywood, and Joe Jackson, in a pub that seemed to attract a crowd of proper punters, despite the hefty bar tariffs.

My departure coincided with an unexpected downpour of rain.
Being as I'm made of sugar and will melt in the rain, I veered into the Sam Smith's pub around the corner for some shelter.

Horse and Groom (128 Great Portland Street, London, W1W 6PS)
This is a pub that dates back to the late 18th century, with an impressive curved front window, recessed doorways either side, and murals of said horse and groom on the first floor frontage.
Located close to the BBC, it is said to have been a haunt of media types waiting to meet editors and producers, or rehearse before broadcasts. There are also some scandalous tales of all-night 'board meetings' hosted here by a one-time owner of Sports Direct, featuring much boozy behavior and vomiting into the fireplace.

No such excitement on my visit.

Long gone are the days when Sam Smith's provided a bargain option in London. £3 for a half of the keg Old Brewery Bitter here. And I can't say I enjoyed it very much.

That's not to say I didn't appreciate the impressive surroundings of the Horse and Groom, which was well worth making a short stop in.

The rain had stopped, so it was time to move on.
More from London in the next post where there will be Spoons, traditional boozers, a micro, and an iguana in the toilet.
But, sadly, no Bass...

I followed the pointing finger and peered into the saloon bar, but Bass there was none.

Propping Up the Bar in Cheltenham Spa

2024-10-06T04:33:00.000-07:00

This was my first visit to Cheltenham since coming for the football in 2006. I was surprised that absolutely nothing in the town centre looked familiar to me, which means my memory isn't what it used to be, or that I imagined my 00's ground-hopping and Forest being in the third division.

The day started - as all the best days do - in 'Spoons before midday.

The Moon Under Water (16-24 Bath Road, Cheltenham, GL50 7HA)
A bit of a photography fail on this, the second JDW branch in the town. It's basically an old car showroom with a greenhouse on the front of it - unlikely to win any awards for most spectacular Spoons architecture.

Inside, it's spacious, stretching a fair way back, with the bar in the middle, and some nice decking overlooking a narrow bit of the River Chelt at the very back. The Moon Under Water still bills itself as a Lloyds No1, with glitter balls, a dance floor, and adverts for DJ Rob suggesting this wouldn't be the ideal place to settle with a paperback for a quiet Saturday evening pint.

A limited menu due to some kitchen issues was probably the reason we found this place very quiet at midday (the more central Bank House Spoons had been packed when we passed it).

I was impressed by the line-up of cask ales - beers from Oakham, Wolf, Salopian, Kirkstall, and Glamorgan breweries on this visit.
I picked the Salopian 'Time Machine', starting the day at a sensible strength of 3.9%. Let's see how long my beer choices remain 'sensible'.

Two great value pints later, we departed from Spoons and made a short walk from the Moon Under Water onto the High Street and out to the town's best known beer drinking pub.
A previous National Pub of the Year, winning the CAMRA award in 2015.

Sandford Park Ale House (20 High Street, Cheltenham, GL50 1DZ)
Entering through the front door, you can circumnavigate the whole pub. There is a staircase to some upper rooms in the middle, a pleasant snug to one side, bar billiards in the next room, and the bar counter in the corner by the doors to a decent back garden.

The beer selection was pretty spectacular: 9 ales on cask making it tricky to pick one. I decided it was cloudy and chilly enough for the dark stuff, ordering a Hop Shed 'Phoenix Porter'.

We had a bit of a pub food fail here, with the wrong items arriving at the table. We got extra fries to compensate, but that was far more fries than I needed. To top this off, I went back to the bar for an unwise half of the 8.4% Verdant 'What Are Dreams Made Of?'

We should really had have a good long walk to aid the digestion after the Ale House.
But instead we bowled into our next venue, The Strand, just a couple of hundred meters along the road.

The Strand (40-42 High Street, Cheltenham, GL50 1EE)
The beers in this bright, airy bar were listed on a giant mind-boggling wooden board to the side of the counter. It looked like they had a Red Willow takeover, with all 4 cask beers and 7 of the keg picks coming from the Macclesfield brewery.
I ordered a Red Willow 'F200 Nelson Idaho 7', because I love a catchy name.

If I'm going to pick faults with The Strand, I'll grumble about the uncomfortable high stools. But it serves a purpose as a modern craft bar; the beer was on decent form; and there was a good range of folk in the L-shaped room, tucking into plates of food and enjoying a wide range of drink options.

We moved on before Mrs PropUptheBar could spot the rum and caramel boozy shakes on the drinks menu.

Next up, we decided to venture a little further outside the town centre to visit the Kemble Brewery Tap, a 2024 Good Beer Guide entry, although it has dropped out in the new edition.
Our route took us past some impressive street art...

We found our route to the pub through some tranquil side streets (thanks Google, I'd have struggled in the days when I relied on a hand-scribbled inaccurate map of inconsistent scale).

The Kemble Brewery (27 Fairview Street, Cheltenham, GL52 2JF)
Disappointingly, it's not a brewery at all. What a fiddle.
In fact, it was originally built as a butchers shop in 1845, before becoming a pub in 1847. At one point, a landlord produced cider in the back yard, which seems to be where it got the name from.
It's a single narrow room, pretty traditional, with various instruments hung from the walls.

I ordered a half of Salopian 'Lemon Dream' - other options being Salopian 'Darwin', Wye Valley 'Butty Bach' and 'HPA', the latter two billed on a small balckboard as "Kemble Inn favourites".
A good quality beer, in a reasonably comfy pub, although I'm not sure we really needed to make the trek out of town to it.

Our next destination was the Bath Tavern.

The Bath Tavern (68 Bath Road, Cheltenham, GL53 7JT)
I do believe that this was once an unspoilt trad city pub, run by the same family for some 130 years. Although I've arrived a bit too late, with it now under new management and having had a bit of a refurb and smartening-up.
That said it was still a pleasant place to sit and while away 30-minutes and sheltered us from a sudden rain shower.
The Wye Valley 'HPA' was the sole cask option, and was on reasonable form.

I'd promised Mrs PropUptheBar craft beer in Cheltenham.
So let's put the remaining GBG pubs on hold for a future visit and delve into some stupidly strong keg murk in Planet Caravan - not just a Black Sabbath album track.

Planet Caravan (25 Bath Street, Cheltenham, GL50 1YA)
Somewhat dangerously, this bar in a converted estate agent was hosting a Left Handed Giant tap takeover on our visit.
Just pick something easy-going and sensible.
Ooooh! 'Blender Celebration' - a 12% imperial stout concoction. Doh!

It was probably for the best that this small bar was uncomfortably busy whilst we were there, lest we decide to stay and work our way through more of the LHG beers. Even the upstairs room was full - and upstairs rooms in micros never get full. My dinky wooden stool was situated on the dog-leg of the route through the bar, necessitating acrobatic movements to avoid being clobbered by folk on their way to the WCs.

Right. We'd switched from the cask to the craft, so we may as well continue the theme.
We headed into the bustling Brewery Quarter, where there is little left of the old West Country Brewery, closed in 1998 and demolished (with the exception of the main brew house) in 2004.
In this entertainment quarter you'll now find Brewhouse & Kitchen, the Botanist, Alchemist, Cosy Club, and all those sorts of things.
And Brewdog, who opened this branch in February 2022...

Brewdog Cheltenham (Unit 3, The Brewery Quarter, Henrietta Street, Cheltenham, GL50 4FA)
I know it has been a while since Brewdog were hip and trendy, and this was a serious distraction from ticking off the beer guide pubs. But we've got a little collection of those Brewdog venue postcards and wanted a Cheltenham one.

The branch of the chain is situated in a former restaurant - one big square room with a high ceiling with some odd foliage hanging from it. Plenty of people on the high tables closest to the bar, although the half set aside for eating was looking painfully quiet for a Saturday evening.

I do appreciate the choice of beers at Bewdog, displayed on the giant white illuminated beer board, especially their guest options. A Fuerst Wiacek 'Feral' double IPA was the beer that threatened to send me to sleep on the train journey home.

And it was toward that train home that we headed.
With a quick stop at the Railway en-route.

Thank you, Cheltenham, for a pleasant day out.
We will be back, as we forgot to do any sight-seeing, have another Wetherspoons to call in to, and several more pubs to visit. And it's a much easier train trip from Oxford via Worcester than I'd previously thought.

The Clifton Arms, Caversham

2024-10-01T08:45:00.000-07:00

In which I journey into Reading, Caversham, and Tilehurst 😨 in search of the first new ticks in my 2025 edition of the Good Beer Guide.
The September forecast was for showers which I naively thought we could dodge. Hopping off the train at Reading station, we crossed the Thames into Christchurch Meadows, where the heavens opened and I got chastised for not bringing anything waterproof.
Our intended destination was The Clifton Arms...but the Fox & Hounds came first...

The Fox and Hounds (51 Gosbrook Road, Caversham, RG4 8BN)
This is a cracking, well-known, Berkshire pub, with a well-deserved reputation for cask ales and craft beer.
Five cask options to pick from, featuring Arbor, Brass Castle, Wylam, Fyne, and the local Elusive Brewery. I stuck local myself, with a fine 'Arc' pale ale from Elusive. Served by a friendly young man who got into a discussion with us about how many people dived into pint measures of sour beers (more than we'd imagine).

This was probably the quietest I've seen the Fox & Hounds, although the clock had only just ticked past noon. But I didn't need a crowd of folk to be content this lunchtime, sheltered from the rain, pint of pale ale in a handled mug, Fontaines DC in the background never sounding so good.

I know it was only supposed to be a quick stop for a bit of shelter, but I couldn't resist picking something else from the craft selection. That'd be a Verdant 10 years celebration 8% double-IPA collaboration with US brewery Fidens. Mmmmm.

Here's a bit of blue plaque history on the outside of the Fox & Hounds...

The rain had stopped.
And we were thirty seconds brisk walk down the road from the new Beer Guide entry, The Clifton Arms.
So, to be honest, we didn't really need to stop to shelter in the Fox & Hounds, which just shows it was a sham excuse to start the day on double-IPAs.

The Clifton Arms (12 Gosbrook Road, Caversham, RG4 8BS)
I must have walked past this a fair few times, having (I think) visited all the other nearby Caversham pubs. It's a proper traditional boozer that has been in the hands of the same landlady since 1995.
With a needy dog that gets the best bit of cushioned bench seating in the house and multiple signs telling us she doesn't need buggers like us waking her up to be stroked.

The 2025 Beer Guide is looking good, even though I much prefer 2024's Iron Maiden cover to fictional pubs from soap operas. The counties are back in alphabetical order, which is a very welcome improvement, meaning it doesn't take me five minutes trying to find the region I live in.
I have four new Oxfordshire pubs to visit, and seven to keep up with the completion of neighbouring Berkshire. We'd reduce that by two on this trip.

But just remember that the Good Beer Guide doesn't always lead you to the places with the widest or most exotic real ale choices...

So, we had a beer I wasn't especially excited by and a dog I couldn't stroke.
But, on the plus side, Mrs PropUptheBar could watch Chelsea winning on the TV (she'd skipped the Brakspear, "the original taste of Oxfordshire" (according to the pump clip), and was drinking J2O).
There were a decent number of punters in for the early hour, someone feeding the jukebox and lining up hard rock classics to compete with the football commentary.

There was no 8% craft beer to tempt me into a second in the Clifton Arms, so we moved on, getting an 'enjoy your day' and 'cheerio' from the locals, which is always a good sign.
We crossed the river again and walked back into the busy centre of Reading, aiming for somewhere I'd not been for many a year.

Zero Degrees Microbrewery and Restaurant (9 Bridge Street, Reading, RG1 2LR)
Part of a small chain, this brewpub opened in Reading in 2007. It stretches from a frontage of a traditional red-brick building on Gun Street (the restaurant bit), to the modern steel frame construction at the back on Bridge Street (the bar and brewery bit).
I've always found it a bit of a 'cold' place with a sparse choice of seating around the bar - none of it comfy.

But I've had a fair few good beers here over the years, including getting caught out by a 6% Märzen that didn't mix well with rum cask cider in the Ale House.

On this occasion I was drawn to the Black Lager, the other option being their signature mango pale ale.
Exmoor pull off calling a beer 'The Beast' quite well.
This 4.6% lager didn't really live up to the name.

Zero Degrees provide the latest shiny brewing equipment pictures for the blog...

Thank you very much to Mrs PropUptheBar for the pizza and beer in Zero Degrees. Although she wasn't feeling quite so generous to treat me to the Meter-Long...

Doesn't say how wide it is though, does it?!

We drank up swiftly after checking bus times, and jumped straight aboard a waiting Purple 17 to Tilehurst.
Where the sun always shines.
The blue skies over our next Beer Guide listed pub were a dramatic change from the lunchtime rain.

The Victoria (1 Norcot Road, Tilehurst, RG30 6BP)
Of all the new places to visit in Berkshire in the new beer guide, I hadn't expected to be making a trek into Tilehurst again. Perhaps I should have just started at the sizzling grill Tylers Rest and crawled around the lot, pre-empting Reading CAMRA sticking the next one in the guide!

At the Victoria we found a trio of real ales available: Pride, alongside seasonal offerings from Butcombe or St Austell.
I ordered a pint of the St Austell 'Thunder Struck', 'cos...y'know...AC/DC.

In a previous life this pub was called The White House, under the stewardship of the long-gone Blatch's Brewery of Theale.
It has undergone a big refurbishment in 2014 turning it into everything you'd expect from a suburban all-rounder.

It was doing a roaring Saturday afternoon trade, with sandwiches laid out for some sort of function in one area, and folks being drawn to the garden by the revitalised weather.
We grabbed one of the last remaining tables where we could keep track of the latest football scores on a TV screen.
You'll spot the young lad in his replica Forest kit in the picture above. I got chatting football with his Derby-county supporting granddad. Only for the youngster - in his glorious Forest kit - to pipe up "I'm Spurs, me".

Crucially, that St Austell beer was on good form.
Two new Berkshire pubs from the Good Beer Guide, both serving good beer. Who would have thought it?

The Haunted Staircase of Oundle

2024-09-26T11:29:00.000-07:00

After exploring Peterborough, we opted to call in to the east Northamptonshire town of Oundle for a brewery tap and a pub with a ghost story.

Oundle is an ancient market town that is home to around 6,250 gentlefolk - and I'm sure they are gentlefolk...you're not in the wilds of Wellingborough here.
The market square has been a filming location for The Crown, there's an annual pipe organ festival, and Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickenson attended the 468 year old, very smart-looking Oundle School.

But we were starting our visit right on the edge of town, at a small retail complex where you can pick up some cycling gear, freshly baked bread, and get your kitchen redesigned in contemporary style. Oundle Wharf - for this is where we were - is also home to Nene Valley Brewery.
They have a taproom next door, opened in 2014 in a renovated waterside warehouse...

Tap & Kitchen (Oundle Wharf, Station Road, Oundle, PE8 4DE)
The Tap has a handy 11:30am opening time, although I still felt wary walking in pre-noon when a staff member pounced on us and asked if she could help. It's a single room divided into several seating areas. The kitchen seems to be the main focus, rather than the tap, although we were left to our own devices to order at the bar and chose where to sit.

There were three cask ales on offer, all relatively low strength, plus another six beers on draft. All listed on a slightly awkward to read blackboard, with no labels on the pumps.
Our choices of 'Blond Session Ale' and 'Simple Pleasures' were...hmm...okay. Served in decent condition, but just a little bit plain - I should have gone for the 'Egyptian Cream' on keg.

There is lovely seating outside on both sides of an inlet of the River Nene. Although it could probably do with a bit of a clean-up - I spotted a bit of algae on the water...

No swimming

We made our way into the heart of the town, admiring the numerous picturesque buildings and making a visit to the Chapel of St Anthony.
This has the tallest spire in Northamptonshire, at 210-feet high.

I'm afraid that we weren't so taken by the interior, but we had been in Peterborough cathedral at 10am that morning, so St Anthony had some pretty stiff competition on the day.
We moved on to the investigate the posh hotel with a ghost story...

Talbot Hotel (New Street, Oundle, PE8 4EA)
The Talbot was rebuilt in 1626 using stone from the ruins of Fotheringhay Castle, although there is believed to have been an inn on the site for many years prior to that.

We strolled into the bar to the right of the entrance archway, then down a couple of steps to the bar counter, waiting patiently (me, patient?!) for anyone from the staff to turn up and serve us. Top marks to the lady who did eventually arrive to pull the beers - she was super-friendly and helpful, giving us a bit of history of the hotel.

A glance at Whatpub had suggested we'd have to endure a Doom Bar in the Talbot, so the choice of two beers by Digfield Brewery, located a few miles to the south of Oundle, was a nice surprise.

Mary Queen of Scots was executed at Fotheringhay Castle in 1587, leading to inevitable claims that she haunts the pub. The staircase in the bar is said to be the very one that she descended on the way to her execution.
Here's the (allegedly) haunted staircase...

A well in the yard was reputed to produce drumming noises as a portent of imminent death and there is a story that a picture of Mary's execution has been known to tumble off the wall of its own accord.
I thought I may have found a pub for a 2024 Halloween post, except there really was nothing very spooky about the Talbot Hotel. All very modernised, with some garishly coloured furnishings, adverts for wedding receptions (from just £3999), and customers tucking into coffee and cake.

We skipped the Rose and Crown - which I'll probably now discover was the best in town - and walked along West Street to the Beer Guide listed Ship...

The Ship Inn (18 West Street, Oundle, PE8 4EF)
This is a fine looking stone pub with coaching entrance to one side and a hallway leading to a restaurant and bar. It has a pleasing olde worlde feel to it, with black-painted wooden beams, a proper pub carpet, big fireplace, and decorative copper kitchenware. Being called the Ship, there is a ship's wheel and lots of maritime paintings - they're just missing a display of knots.

We arrived when the pub was quiet - the staff giving the pump clips their weekly polish.
There were two beers on the bar: St Austell 'Tribute' or Brewsters 'Hophead'. The latter for me - another sub 4% pale ale from the Lincolnshire brewery.

We squeezed in one more Northamptonshire pub after travelling across the county during the afternoon.
We made it to the village of Stoke Bruerne which has a couple of pubs and an Indian restaurant on the side of the Grand Union Canal, by the locks and narrow road bridge.
The Boat Inn is on the left-side of my canal pic - lurking in the shadow to defy a better pub photo.

The Boat Inn (Bridge Road, Stoke Bruerne, NN12 7SB)
This is a grade II listed inn which has been run by the same family since 1877. It is a much extended place with a modern wood panelled bar on the car park side, and several extensions with tables ready for the food trade.
But step in through the door by the canal and there are a couple of cracking basic pub rooms.

The beer selection from the Marston's stable was plentiful yet not especially exciting: New World, Old Empire, Wainwright, Razorback, Banks's Amber, and a St Austell 'Tribute'.

My 'New World Pale Ale' was a decent form, accompanying a filling plate of food.

I was chuffed to see the Northamptonshire skittles...

But just had one quick go at knocking down the pins, paranoid at how much noise I was making.

And that was our last port of call. A day when the locations and September blue skies had been better than the beers, to be honest.
But at least I've got a lovely pub sign picture to end the post on.

Peterborough Pub Crawl

2024-09-19T12:53:00.000-07:00

A Sunday excursion to Peterborough, which would take us to micro pubs, a barge, evening meal in Spoons, craft beer, and a heritage pub.
Look at the lovely midday sunshine and blue sky. Just our luck that it'd be raining by 3 o'clock.

After a short trek around the city centre, we set off south across the River Nene and into suburban Fletton where our first micro pub of the day awaited...

The Wonky Donkey (102C High Street, Fletton, Peterborough, PE2 8DR)
On our arrival there was just one couple sat at a table tucking into a cheeseboard - "I'm setting aside this knife as it's contaminated with brie" was the announcement that greeted us. I'm assuming it was communal micro pub cheese, although they seemed like they were undertaking a challenge to demolish the lot.

A chap trudged back and forth from the rear room/garden, loading his car with his northern soul and 2-tone DJ booth and catering paraphernalia. Apparently we were one day too late for the Pirate Party. A fair few locals trotted in, filling all the front room tables, all complaining of sore heads from the previous night's frivolities, although that wasn't putting them off ordering bottles of German lager.
I picked the Leatherbritches ale, guided to it by the Queen connection and 7" style pump clip, rather than the Jester, Chinook, and Citra hop mix.

Good value at £4.40 a pint, with plenty of other ale and cider to pick from if you're fussier than me.
A decent start in a very local micro pub.

Moving on, we headed back to the riverside and to Charters Bar, spectacularly situated on a Dutch barge which dates back to 1907.

Charters (Town Bridge, Peterborough, PE1 1FP)
This used to be always be a port of call for me on football visits, being just a couple of minutes from London Road. The difference now is that the outdoor area has dramatically multiplied in size.
We climbed the gang-plank, a Thai restaurant in the top section, the bar in the depths of the boat. It's a bar that I love - full of character and serving up a choice of beers that could keep you here all afternoon.

One bank of hand pumps serves four local Oakham ales at very reasonable prices; another bit of the bar features the guest beers, as well as there being some decent keg and cider on offer.
As it was, I opted for the strong (6%) Xtreme 'Xporter', a marvelous dark brew, accompanying a platter of Thai food.

Departing from Charters, we back-tracked on ourselves, venturing into a quiet side street to seek out the Coalheavers Arms.

Coalheavers Arms (5 Park Street, Peterborough, PE2 9BH)
This is a characterful little pub, open-plan, with dividing walls creating three distinct areas. Most of the punters were settled in the middle part, on bar stools and tables in front of two TV screens showing Sunday afternoon footy.

An interesting fact about the Coalheavers is that it's the only pub in the city to have been hit by a WW2 bomb - this penetrated through to the cellar but didn't explode - the pub opening as usual later the same night.
Cask ales on offer included a couple of Greene King seasonal brews and a Goffs 'Jester 31'
The Goffs for me - top tropical murk...

We took the beer and settled on benches in the rear corner, surrounded by a selection of motorbike racing pictures and memorabilia. The staff flicked the TV nearby us onto the football and I found myself hooked on the north London derby.
Half time - a quick trip to use the facilities...

Then we were off, making the 5-minute walk to Oundle Road in a handy gap in the rain showers that had come out of nowhere.

Yard of Ale (72 Oundle Road, Peterborough, PE2 9PA)
I was cheerful to see screens in every direction on which I could follow the second half of the footy in the Yard of Ale. Tough luck if you don't like football, although a couple of chaps defiantly sat reading their books in front of the TV. There was a nice split of people supporting both sides, plus a man in a Forest shirt in the back room (we won a game, donchaknow!). I got chatting to him on the way back from the loos leading Mrs PropUptheBar to think I'd absconded through a back door.

There was a great selection of cask at the Yard of Ale, from which I opted for the Black Lodge Brewery 'Anytime Cowboy', a viciously strong and fruity 'proper' IPA.

One omission from this Peterborough pub crawl was the Palmerston Arms, just a couple of doors down from the Yard of Ale. But the rain seemed to have stopped again, and we wanted to try and get back to the centre and check into our hotel without getting drenched.
That done, we ventured back out to our second micro pub.

The Bumble Inn (46 Westgate, Peterborough, PE1 1RE)
Opened in 2016, this micro is located in a former chemists shop. It has been a hit with the local CAMRA folk who've named it the branch Pub Of The Year in 2024.

It's a micro of the authentic variety - one room, one WC, no distractions - talk to each other etc etc.
Cask ale on the bar came from Rudgate, Daleside, Hobsons, Thirsty Moose, and Black Hole Brewery. A sensible 3.4% Thirsty Moose 'Belta Blonde' session ale for me.

Without football on a telly, we just had the woodland scene on the opposite wall to stare at, with it's hidden ewok and bambi.

Right, enough of these Beer Guide places.
What we needed next was some sour beer whilst listening to Audioslave.

Blind Tiger (11-13 Cowgate, Peterborough, PE1 1LZ)
This modern central craft bar is well worth a visit. Seating ranges from the comfy cushioned bench I was on, to high stools, or those rather tragic swing seats suspended from the ceiling.
We arrived to a Sour Beer Showcase, so decided to go with the flow.
Now, here's some proper beer.... (!)

All very colourful stuff. All pretty good as well, although we reached our sour beer capacity for the day with four 1/3 pints between us.
The bar was quiet, just half a dozen other customers, the barman looking thoroughly bored as he counted down the clock to the 8pm closing time. At least he had a decent grungy alt rock soundtrack to listen to.
There is also some (short-lived, in my case) entertainment to be had from the arcade machines and a table-top Ms Pacman console. Seriously, is it even possible to get past level 2?!

Leaving the Blind Tiger, we called into the Drapers Arms Wetherspoon branch for a bite to eat and a ginger beer. A bit of sustenance and fizzy pop gave us the energy to make a 20-minute walk north into the suburbs of Peterborough, a heritage pub our target.
Dusk had fallen by the time we arrived, the un-illuminated frontage plus parking cars making for a tricky pub picture.

The Hand & Heart (12 Highbury Street, Peterborough, PE1 3BE)
It looked so dark on approach that we feared it may not be open, but there was light spilling from the doorway.
This leads into a corridor, with an off-sales counter and doors to the Bar, Smoke Room, and back yard where you'll find the outdoor gents. The back room was locked, so I didn't get to see that. Which left us joining the handful of Sunday evening customers in the front bar.

It's an outstanding pub room. No nonsense seating around two walls, fireplace with darts above it, bookshelf full of beer guides, and a TV showing Allo Allo.
At the end of 2023 we found ourselves in the St John's Hotel in Hull watching Steptoe and Son. The Hand & Heart provided my second classic British comedy in a pub experience, all the punters keeping at least half an ear on the show and chuckling at the latest mess René had gotten himself into surrounding the stolen Madonna with the big boobies.

There were three cask ales available, with a couple more pump clips turned around. Mine was a reasonable pint of Brewsters 'Outsanding in their Field'. A handwritten 'cash only' sign took away the "cash-card-which do you prefer-either" exchange and ensured the staff member got back to his game of cribbage quickly.

A great pub.
Leaving us with just enough time - and barely enough room - for one last beer in The Ostrich. Another dubious night-time picture.

The Ostrich is somewhere I'll have to visit earlier in the day next time I'm in Peterborough. I suspect it would be one of my favourite pubs had I started there, or visited when they had live music on. But this time, I was ready to drink up and make for my bed.

Peterborough had been a winning destination on this occasion - a good variety of places visited and a whole lot missed which should necessitate a return visit.

Taunton Pub Explorations

2024-09-12T08:40:00.000-07:00

A Somerset trip where we get to sit in front of the Ian Botham picture, meaning I could tell Mrs PropUptheBar how he challenged us to eat three Shredded Wheat in the '80's. Which is better than trying to explain anything about cricket - a subject I'm a bit hazy on.

We found more than cricket in the Somerset county town...we found a dalek, a ghost Spoons, some annoying table service, and the best pint of the day in a sports club a hefty trek from the centre.
But let's keep up the regular habit and start the day in Wetherspoon's...

Perkin Warbeck (22-23 East Street, Taunton, TA1 3LP)
This is an enormous branch of the chain, stretching waaaaay back from its entrance on the shopping street. You know the score: booths and high benches along the side, regimented tables-for-four down the middle, those precarious tall perching spots for the hardened drinkers in front of the bar.
And the whole place was almost full - we traipsed the length looking for a suitable seat, marveling at the Perkin Warbeck's ability to attract the fair folk of Taunton on a Saturday lunchtime.

When we eventually found a free table next to an eccentric lady with her cider and chips, we ordered beer and food on the app. I opted, perhaps unwisely, for the Exeter Brewery 'MC6' - a wicked 6% dark old ale which was a meal in itself - a cracking beer. You'd be bold to go back for a second at lunchtime, though.

Fed and watered, we headed back into the sunshine to wander the streets of the town a little more.
Our route took us to Taunton Minster, with its striking 40 meter high tower, built at the beginning of the 16th century when the town was prospering from the wool trade.

A few quiet back streets took us from the minster to the beer-guide listed Ring Of Bells.
Which absolutely looked the business from outside as I took the picture - church tower, cricketing floodlights, hanging baskets, and mobility scooter.

The Ring Of Bells (16-17 St James Street, Taunton, TA1 1JS)
The problem was the 'please wait to be seated' podium greeting us at the front door. To be fair, the young man welcomed us heartily, told us we could sit where we liked, and held the floor, chatting to us and a handful of regulars.
But I was perplexed as to why they figured table service for drinks was best.

You can look at the current pump clips on the wall, but some high tables are strategically placed to stop you getting anywhere near the pumps themselves.

No complaints about my Otter Brewery 'Twelfth Man', a special for the pub
I just never got over the odd fact that it had to be brought to my table by a legion of staff that was threatening to outnumber the customers.

I'd hate to suggest that Taunton isn't a great pub town, but we were feeling a bit short of options at 3pm in the afternoon.
We contemplated catching a bus up to Bishops Lydeard and the Quantock Brewery Tap, although we'd been there a couple of days previously and probably didn't to make a return visit so soon.
Instead, we ambled into the Musuem of Somerset.

I'd recommend this highly - lots of interesting exhibits in the old castle buildings, keeping us occupied for much longer than I expected it would. Roman mosaics, fossils, coins from the Frome hoard, plus a Doctor Who exhibition.

The dress-up section was definitely not just for kids and I looked great as a Tom Baker era Doctor. Mrs PropUptheBar is under strict instructions not to release the picture.

Right, time for more beer.
We back-tracked almost all the way to the railway station to the Plough...

The Plough Inn (75 Station Road, Taunton, TA1 1PB)
This was a pub I really liked.
Entrance is via the alley to the side, with a door to the right taking you into the bar, or straight on to the back room.
It's a proper cider place as you can see from my picture of the shelved boxes behind the bar. There was just the one cask ale - a St Austell 'Tribute' racked to one side. The cask was tapped especially for me, making for a quality fresh pint, served straight from the barrel.

We settled down in the more basic back room: wooden benches as opposed to battered sofas in the front. A top notch pint of beer, friendly staff, and bench seating picture of the month...

Heading back toward the centre, we passed what used to Taunton's second Spoons.
After several years standing empty, it reopened this July as an independent venue, so we figured we'd investigate.

The Coal Orchard (30-32 Bridge Street, Taunton, TA1 1UD)
The odd name comes from the fact that an orchard once stood across the road from this site. It was later cleared to make way for a landing stage on the River Tone for boats shipping in Welsh coal.

It didn't have the crowds that we'd encountered in the Perkin Warbeck, but hopefully that'll pick up. Real ale choices were Tim Taylors Landlord or Boltmaker, Wadworth 6X, or - my pick - the Severn Brewing 'Double Hopped Pale Ale'. A well kept beer at a bargain weekday happy hour price.

It doesn't look like much has changed since the Spoons days in terms of decor, signage, and big upstairs WCs. There was a distinct lack of furniture creating much more open space to admire the carpet design. And the new owners didn't have the kitchen up and running, which I guess made a difference to how busy it was.

We just had one last place to go to.
I didn't want to come to Taunton and not visit all the Beer Guide entries (3), so we'd had to wait for a 6pm opening time for the Wyvern Club.

We reached the Club just before six, satisfied we'd clocked up a good step-count for the day, and seen more of Taunton housing estates than the average visitor.

Wyvern Social Club (Mountfields Road, Taunton, TA1 3BJ)
This is a club without any panic of trying to find your CAMRA membership card, or checking if your copy of the Beer Guide is enough to grant you entry.
The door is wide open and a sign noted that this operates as a regular pub.

The beer range offered a couple of South West regulars and a local Doonicans brew - 'Bollotics', the Houses of Parliament featuring on the pump clip.

That Doonican's beer was delicious - packed full of flavour with a bitter, hoppy finish - beer of the day.

Arriving at opening time, and unable to hang around for too long if we didn't want to miss our train, we didn't get to the see the Wyvern in full swing.
It was somewhere I was comfy, sat on the cushioned banqueting bench seating which ran under the big windows looking out on the sports fields.

The Wyvern Club was our last port of call on a day out in Taunton.
Somewhere that doesn't have the strongest line-up of trad pubs, but had never-the-less provided us with a good day and a few decent pints.

Through the Nettles to the Black Horse

2024-09-11T04:10:00.000-07:00

On a grey overcast August weekend, we decided to stay local and seek out a couple of Oxfordshire pubs that we'd not previously visited.
First things first, we navigated the never-ending works at Botley Road, caught bus 44 up to Cumnor, then set out on foot.
Here's the route...

A footpath took us south to Besselseigh - where we resisted any temptation to call into the Brunning and Price - then onto a nice, easy to follow path, emerging from the woods into Appleton churchyard.
A short way along the road is the village pub...

The Plough Inn (Eaton Road, Appleton, OX13 5JR)
This is the last remaining pub serving the 950-or-so folk of Appleton. The Thatched Tavern and Three Horseshoes are now private residences with nothing but their house names to remind us of their previous incarnations.

We arrived at The Plough at a quiet time - not a soul sitting inside and just a couple of visitors on the picnic benches in the garden. I guess the locals were out in the metropolis for the day.

There were two hand pumps in action, one serving the ever-unreliable Morland 'Original', the other offering this stuff...

It was a bold move going for the beefy 6% black IPA at lunchtime, but this was a superb pint.
Served to us by a nice chatty fella in tartan trousers and a Lamb of God t-shirt.
Top marks go to The Plough for the food we ordered - not the cheapest, but almost certainly the best pub lunch I've had for some time.

Our onward journey took us across the A420 and onto pleasant paths through Hitch Woods.
Pudding available to be picked to the side of the path...

Then into the pig farm, where the residents didn't seem overly happy with our presence...

It was more by luck than judgement that I found the unmarked route through the pigs. In the next field there was no clear path and it took a bit of investigation to locate a style hidden in a tangle of nettles and brambles. I think we must have been the first souls to cross that path in the summer of '24.

I just hoped the pub on the other side of the road was going to be open. The Black Horse at Gozzard's Ford is a former Greene King inn which closed the doors a few years back, described in the Oxford Mail as one of the forgotten pubs of the county. They've recently reopened under new ownership, but the scantily updated social media mentioned a closure to fix some dodgy pipes and didn't indicate whether this had been resolved.

I was glad to see a light on, striding in the side door just slightly disheveled with scratches and nettle stings.

The Black Horse (Faringdon Road, Gozzard's Ford, OX13 6JH)
This is a big whitewashed roadside inn, dating back some 350 years. Through the door, there is a long room on three levels, trip hazard steps between each one, the bar in the central section. A half dozen punters were settled at the far end, where the ceiling is higher and a TV on the wall was showing footy.
Local Loose Cannon beers were on offer.

We were warned by the chap serving us that the 'Miller Queen' hefeweisen was nearing the end of the barrel and that he'd be happy to change it should it not be up to scratch. I did wonder why he couldn't just check it himself, but we gave it the thumbs up (just about) and settled on a table at the side of the room.

The Black Horse also has a large restaurant in the back, plus a meeting room somewhere, and a garden to the side. It just needs some customers.

We made a bit of a slip-up...'someone' turned the wrong way out of the Black Horse and started walking down the road in the wrong direction into the wilds of West Oxfordshire. One about-turn later, and we were going the right way towards the village of Shippon and it's one pub...

Prince of Wales (60 Barrow Road, Shippon, OX13 6JQ)
This was an odd little village pub.
Not least because of the portable heating arrangements...

The pub itself is located in the front extension of a much older-looking rural cottage. It's divided into two rooms with a bar counter straddling both of them. We headed right towards the hubbub of conversation, into a rather ramshackle dimly lit room that was in need of a good tidying-up session.

The cask selection offered a relatively rare sighting of Butcombe beer in the county.

We took our drinks out to the patio, where there were a few more locals on the benches in front of the Covid-era marquee.
It turned out one of them had driven past us whilst we were walked in the opposite direction down the road, causing him a little intrigue.
He did recommend a pub that we'd have reached had we kept going that way. Then told us we'd missed a short cut between Gozzard's Ford and Shippon across the airfield.
"The airfield with the chained gate and strictly no admittance sign?"
"Oh, don't worry about that", he said dismissively.
I know the airfield is infrequently used these days, but it would be just my luck to have to dodge a light aircraft landing and be chased by angry aviation folk. Would have made the blog post more interesting though.

Shippon is only separated from Abingdon by the presence of the A34. We moved on, strolling across the road bridge and through outskirts of the town, making our way to the Brewery Tap.
Looking good in the afternoon sunshine...

The Brewery Tap (40-42 Ock Street, Abingdon, OX14 5BZ)
This pub was opened in 1993 by Morland, who converted three town houses to create an outlet for their beer on the periphery of the brewery.
As it is, the pub has outlasted the brewery by a number of years. Morland brought Ruddles in 1997 and shifted production to Oakham. Then Greene King snapped up Morland three years later and the brewery closed for good, destined to be converted to flats.

The Brewery Tap has a big fireplace and a couple of nice rustic areas in its L-shaped layout, not that you'd know it from my unflattering picture.

The keg wall wasn't too exciting, featuring Red Stripe and Amstel. But the Brewery Tap can be relied on for some well kept cask - six to pick from on this visit, everything except the Tim Taylor Landlord coming from surrounding counties.
I stuck very local with LoveBeer 'Not on your Nelly', brewed a couple of miles to the south of Abingdon in Milton.

Just the one pint on this occasion, as our table was reserved for the musical entertainment for the evening who'd be setting up soon.
I just glanced at the Brewery Tap's Facebook page and spotted that they've released their Christmas menu. On the 9th September...oh dear. Summer's really over, isn't it.

Woking Pub Explorations

2024-08-22T03:39:00.000-07:00

The chances of a scruffy pub ticker coming from Oxford for a pint in the Railway Club are a million to one they said.
But still they come!

This post finds me travelling to Woking, the original setting of War of the Worlds. So when I arrived I made a beeline to get a picture of the fantastic Tripod statue on Church Street before those clouds could build up and spoil the blue sky background.

HG Wells wrote War of the Worlds whilst living in Woking in the mid 1890's. I wonder what he'd have thought of Jeff Wayne's musical version, or Spielberg moving the action to New York...or of the local Wetherspoon's being named in his honour?

The Herbert Wells (51-57 Chertsey Road, Woking, GU21 5AJ)
The building that this pub is located in was previously a branch of Woolworth's, prior to opening as Spoons in 1995. It's a big place, the bar and much of the seating in one rectangular room, with a quieter separate room to the left side.

This is a longstanding beer guide entry, serving up the regular JDW range alongside local Surrey Hills 'Gilt Complex' and 'Shere Drop'.

I ordered the 'Guilt Complex', a golden, hoppy, summery ale. And yet another Mangalorian Cauliflower curry - an enjoyable quiet lunchtime pint with the food making for a sensible start to the day.

The Herbert Wells provided some competition for Dunstable's Gary Cooper for my Best Statue in a Spoons award...

It's quite appropriate that the pub has a statue within it, as Woking is full of them.

I believe this is the most statues I've encountered in a town since Skopje.

I won't include all of the pictures I took of urban art in Woking...although they're possibly better pictures than the one I took of the Railway Athletic Club.

Woking Railway Athletic Club (Goldsworth Road, Woking, GU21 6JT)
That's not the entrance in the picture above, although a pic of the main door along the side of the building wouldn't have been much more fetching.
It was also very much a 'ring buzzer for entry' kind of place. Just don't advertise yourself as a complete weirdo by blurting out "I'm here for a beer guide tick" when the nice lady behind the bar asks how she can help.

There were two cask ales on: Church End 'What the Foxes Hat' or VOG 'Hotel Barrifornia'.
I opted for the Yakima hopped 'Hotel Barrifornia', very reasonable at £3.20 a pint, Eagles lyrics proving popular on the Untappd reviews.

The club consisted of one long room, pool table to one end with a solo player (good way to retain a winning streak), and a handful of blokes dotted around on the cushioned benches along the wall.
The regulars at the next table involved me in their conversation, ending on an ominous warning that "everything shrinks and shrivels in old age". I can't remember the context.

With the centre of town seeming to offer slim pub pickings, I decided to make the short walk northbound to Horsell - once a village in its own right, now swallowed up into greater Woking.
I found my way around the dual carriageway which was in my way, then across the Basingstoke canal.
Aha, more statues... this time cricketers adorning both sides of the pedestrian bridge...

I think I got a bit impatient ambling along the Horsell road.
As soon as I rounded a corner and saw a pub I snapped a picture and strode right in.
Unfortunately, it wasn't the right pub - the Good Beer Guide regular - which was 50 meters further along the road.

The Red Lion (123 High Street, Horsell, GU21 4SS)
Okay, so it wasn't the pub I'd intended to be in, but they did have the local beer on offer at the bar.

This looked to be predominantly a dining pub, with seating on a couple of levels in an L-shaped room, all very bright, neat and tidy. A few tables left of polite folk finishing lunch; smartly attired staff who call you 'sir'.
I was glad I'd put on a decent top on rather than my Bob Vylan t-shirt.

The Thurstons 'Horsell Gold' was a decent, well-kept pint.
But it was the original home of that brewery and the GBG entry that I'd made this walk for.

The Crown (104 High Street, Horsell, GU21 4ST)
With no disrespect to the Red Lion, this was more like it. Two rooms either side of the pub, with a bar counter straddling both. Of course I got it wrong and picked the empty one, then found the route round the back to find a table amongst the afternoon punters.

The Crown was the local CAMRA branch Pub of the Year winner in 2022 and 2023. Definitely a real ale drinkers pub, with five hand pumps serving up beers from Thurstons, Church End, Triple fff, and Surrey Hills. Just look at the neat and tidy tasting note blackboards.

Bonus points for proper beer towels - a rarity these days, now that most places have those bobbly bit rubber things on the bar.
I stuck with Thurstons brewery, ordering a pint of the American pale ale. Thurstons was originally brewed in the back of the Crown, before moving to a separate site a couple of minutes down the road.
A great pint, enjoyed in comfortable surroundings, the folks around me doing the crossword in the papers, chatting, and sharing a bit of banter with the landlord.

I made my way back the same way to the town centre, checked the train times, and figured I could squeeze in a quick half before the next Guildford-bound service.

The Sovereigns (Guildford Road, Woking, GU22 7QQ)
I opted for the nearest pub to the station, close enough to have originally been called the Railway Hotel. A name which I prefer - no idea where they got 'sovereigns' from.

We're in the world of Ember Inns here. A sprawling place with multiple areas, modern decor, sport on TVs, big pub grub menu, and three real ales to pick from.
And pretty much no late afternoon custom...

I still enjoyed my Rudgate 'Ruby Mild'. It's my own fault visiting at quieter times, but at least I get the pick of the tables.
Here's the view through the window from my seat, Woking erecting its own fancy modern buildings next to the station.

Heck, there were a lot of traffic lights to wait for and building sites to navigate for such a short distance between the pub and platform. I drank up quickly and made my way for the next south-bound departure.
Three trains and one bus made for a lengthy journey home, but I felt it had been worth it to wander around a town I don't know at all well, enjoy a couple of good pints, and see all those statues.

Staines and Egham Pub Crawl

2024-08-16T09:54:00.000-07:00

A bit more Surrey, in which we indulge in the homebrew at Thames Side Brewery, discover that magnificent University buildings exist beyond Oxford, and gatecrash a baby shower.

As per usual...we started in Spoons.
A Spoons with a long frontage, minimal hanging basket effort, and a man getting comfortable in the hands behind your head pose in the window.

The George (2-8 High Street, Staines, TW18 4EE)
It's a relatively modern building, constructed in the '90's to replace a market which burnt down. Prior to that you'd have found Tesco in this location, and - much further back - an old inn called The George, from which this took the name.

Alongside the 'Spoons regular beers there was Frome 'Funky Monkey', Maxim 'Double Maxim', and a Coach House 'Blueberry Best Bitter' available when we visited.

We ordered two of the above by the app, saving ourselves from standing in a Wetherspoon's queue, two identical pints arriving shortly after.
"Which is which?" we asked.
"Dunno, I just pick them up from the end of the counter and deliver them".

Hmm..that's a downfall of ordering by the app, isn't it?
Although, to be fair, there have been occasions where two beers have been poured right in front of me at the bar and I've still managed to forget which is which.

It looks like I didn't take any pictures inside The George. I made up for that when we arrived at the Thames Side Brewery, a short walk away.

Thames Side Brewery (1 Hale Street, Staines, TW18 4UW)
This brewery was set up by a chap called Andy Hayward in 2015, moving a couple of times before settling here.
You'll find the brewing kit down one side, a stage at the end of the room, and various rescued furniture throughout a large open space. It had a bit of a social club feel to it, albeit without the punters early on a Saturday afternoon for us to socialise with.

Nice jukebox and stylish seating in the front corner near the door..

And a hefty choice of beers available at the bar. There were the Thames Side regular cask offerings, plus several 'White Label' series brews.
I'm a sucker for pump clips depicting slabs of vinyl and anything that claims to be limited edition. Hence ordered two of these: the Deep Purple orientated 'Black Night', a tasty 4.3% stout, and - long beer name alert - 'You're never too old to rock & roll if you're too young to die".

The latter was a hefty 6.3% old ale, of the pond water murk variety...

I don't think I'd have wanted more than a half of it. I would have been quite happy trying the other beers on offer, but needed to pace myself if we were going to make it to the rest of the pubs on today's list.
Despite it being quiet, I really did like the Brewery - good music and lovely staff in a taproom with a lot of character.

Before moving to the current site, Thames Side Brewery used to concoct their beers in a modern building on the riverside. That site is now run as an independent craft bar, so we figured we'd pop our heads in and have a look.

If it's good enough for Gene Simmons, it's good enough for us.

Last Hop (Unit 2, Thames Edge Court, Clarence Road, Staines, TW18 4SU)
As with our previous destination, this was a wide open space without enough people in it. There was a stage for live entertainment, and a stack of those Tank beer things to one side. It's smaller than the Thames Side Brewery, but has the bonus of the riverside location.

There were two cask ales on offer: Windsor & Eton 'Koh-i-noor' and Titanic 'Plum Porter'.
Both familiar, so I tried to order the strong Windsor & Eton keg stuff, only to be disappointed the Belgian Diablo and Storm had both run out, despite still showing on the electronic screen.
So I ended up with a local Stardust 'Innuendo' 6.5% hazy NE IPA. Then drank it too fast when we checked the train times and realised how long it was going to take to walk to the station.

We moved on from Staines for the next part of our day out.
A quick march down to the station, then onto the South Western train for a 5-minute hop to Egham. I did come here many years ago for the beer festival at the Services Club, beloved by the tickers but - other than that - this town is a mystery to me.

We walked along the busy A38 towards our pub, then got distracted by the Royal Holloway University of London. This distracted us from our mission, as we diverted into the grounds, attracted by the impressive architecture on a grand scale.

And there I was thinking we had a monopoly on University buildings back home in Oxford.

Our destination was in quieter side streets, just beyond the bounds of the University campus.
And it had an absolutely top-notch pub sign...

The Happy Man (12 Harvest Road, Englefield Green, TW20 0QS)

This dates back to Victorian times when two residential properties were converted into the pub, original custom coming from the workers building the Royal Holloway College, who would have worked up quite a thirst judging by the size and intricacy of the parts we'd seen.

The pub has mostly retained the original layout, consisting of several snug interlinked spaces, the bar itself straddling the two front rooms.

Here's the cask choice on our visit...

Beers from London, Devon, Hampshire, and wherever Laines concoct their ales (they've become quite prolific and it can't all come from that Brighton brewpub).
I picked the Bowman 'Wallops Wood', predictably misreading it and asking for 'Wally's' Wood. A decent chestnut coloured, malty bitter, enjoyed in a cracking proper pub.

We had a half-mile walk around residential Englefield Green streets to the next Beer Guide pub on our list.

The Beehive (34 Middle Hill, Englefield Green, TW20 0JQ)
The alarm bells began to ring when we saw the 'Fully Booked' A-board. Then, as we squeezed through the crowds under the awnings to the side of the pub, it dawned on me that everyone was much more smartly dressed than I was (not difficult) and I spotted the flower displays and a large table of presents. Baby shower. Bugger.

I almost gave up, but popped my head back in through the side door and asked if we were okay to grab a pint and take it out to the front tables away from the event. One check by the staff later and we were sat under the umbrella out front with a pricey pint of Pride.

WhatPub tells us the "Cosy well kept open-plan Fuller's local has a light and airy feel."
I'll have to take their word for that, having only seen it briefly in a state of chaos.
Not really a great pint, either, so a bit of a fail all round, our visit to the Beehive.

We walked from there back into the centre of Egham, with one last destination...

The Red Lion (53 High Street, Egham, TW20 9EW)
The Red Lion was packed to the rafters inside too, but with a much more pubby crowd.
There is a reference to a Red Lion on the High Street dating back to 1641 and an even older date-stone amongst some of the red bricks. It would have once been a coaching inn on the London-Penzance road.

It has had a fair few refurbishments inside since the coaching inn days, becoming a smart and shiny open-plan place, football on the TV screens, lots of Madri and Old Mout cider being knocked back by a crowd of all ages.

I finished the day on the Courage 'Directors', which we used to think was the bees-knees when we drank it in the Withington Ale House as students in the 90's.

And with that, we were back on the train for the trek back through Reading and homeward-bound, several new Surrey Good Beer Guide pub ticks under my belt.