Your local pubs

[telstarbox]

If you like a pint what are your local pubs like - are you blessed with booze options or dry in a desert?

My town has around 15 pubs for 40k people (a few have closed in the last few years). The two nearest me are a beer haven where pints are around a fiver with a constantly rotating lineup of quality ales and lagers, and a more cheap and cheerful one which does Madris for £4.50 and has a million football TVs.

 

[dangie]

My town used to be excellent for pubs & Working Men’s Clubs. However since the death of the mining industry and closure of the power stations many have closed. Note: we still have a Wetherspoons….!!

However my pub of choice is a small Micro pub. Four ever changing draft ales. Three changing ‘Craft’ beers. Three or four real ciders. Plus there’s no television and best of all no lager. Beers & cider are approx £3.30 to £3.60 a pint.

 

[JGurney]

I am, rather reluctantly, visiting pubs less often as several of my old favourites have taken to playing irritating muzac. Those with two or three rooms have installed loudspeakers in all of them - why not leave at least one room as it was? In the pub nearest to my home they have no sound system, but the barmaid has taken to playing pop music via her mobile 'phone there, leading me to leave after one pint rather than stay for another.

 

[alex397]

Before I was that interested in pubs, I thought they were pretty much all chains or gastropubs. However there are still plenty of decent local pubs about which I have discovered in Kent. Some of them try to emulate the chains, but many are still the proper ‘old school’ pubs not much different from the past (except for the lack of smoke!).
In Canterbury, I would recommend The Unicorn. That’s a real gem!

Even London still has quite a few independent pubs left. A particular favourite of mine is The Sutton Arms at Great Sutton Street near Farringdon (not to be confused with another Sutton Arms nearby!). The landlord talks to me like an old mate. This place, in my opinion, has a perfect combination of a traditional pub with also a craft beer scene. It means this place gets a variety of punters and a good atmosphere. Many pubs in London just feel a bit fake to me, but decent ones can still be found.
Anyway, I’m now thinking too much about pubs!

However my pub of choice is a small Micro pub. Four ever changing draft ales. Three changing ‘Craft’ beers. Three or four real ciders. Plus there’s no television and best of all no lager. Beers & cider are approx £3.30 to £3.60 a pint.

That sounds like the sort of place I enjoy. Have quite a few of those down in Kent.
I have to say though, in my view there’s nothing wrong with a quality lager (or specifically a helles or pilsner) that’s perhaps made by a small local brewery, or even some of the larger German or Czech brewers. I am starting to prefer ales though.

 

[dangie]

…..and best of all no lager.

.…I have to say though, in my view there’s nothing wrong with a quality lager…

I do agree. German pilsner type beers are often excellent. My comment on lager is the Carling, Fosters, San Miguel etc etc. I rank them alongside John Smith’s, Boddingtons, Tetleys etc. All cold tasteless muck.

I used to like drinking Guinness but since they started serving it ice cold I won’t touch it.

 

[SuspectUsual]

I’m lucky - I live about a mile outside the nearest town, and in it is a pub called, er, The Pub, which has 8 (very) different real ales on handpumps and another 20 or so on keg. And no televisions, and no jukebox / noisy music

 

[alex397]

I do agree. German pilsner type beers are often excellent. My comment on lager is the Carling, Fosters, San Miguel etc etc. I rank them alongside John Smith’s, Boddingtons, Tetleys etc. All cold tasteless muck.

Yes, those sort of lagers I don’t understand! Fosters isn’t even popular in Australia.

 

[Bald Rick]

St Albans, being the home of CAMRA, is rather well blessed with quality pubs. You can do a pub crawl of 6 decent pubs in a residential area just south of the city centre, and not walk half a mile in total.

It’s also interesting that new pubs are opening (2 in the last few years on the main ‘high street’, with a third imminent, plus a few micro bars out in residential areas ) and the only pubs that have closed are those that were generally rubbish. Including, happily, halving the number Wetherspoons establishments.

 

[DerekC]

My village has one pub, which is huge. It used to be a coaching inn. In the 1930s someone built a large flat roofed (and fairly ugly) front extension and in the 1950s some other bright spark knocked out all the inside of the ground floor and turned it into a large open space. To be fair it probably suited the needs of a roadhouse in the days before the breathalyser, but today it's a big problem. Despite being on a main road and having a very attractive garden by the river, it doesn't have a snug bar so locals don't go in for a pint very much and it has never (in my time) had a good enough reputation for food to bring in people from a wide area to fill it. Result - it has got through three or four owners of the freehold, several updates none of which have changed the inside very much, some quite long periods of closure and about a dozen landlords in the last 25 years. It's 17th Century and listed Grade II so would be difficult and expensive to convert into anything else, which is probably what has saved it. It reopened at Christmas after several months of closure, but is looking shaky again. Bright ideas welcome!

 

[Cowley]

The Beer Engine Newton st Cyres for me (which I’ve just got back from actually). I love it and I love their beer.

 

[GusB]

If you like a pint what are your local pubs like - are you blessed with booze options or dry in a desert?

It's rather dire here, but not quite a desert. In terms of licenced premises, there are five in my village (c.1700 population); two are pubs (one a hotel), two are clubs (golf and bowling) and the other is a bar/restaurant attached to the caravan site (responsible for much of the reduction in trade in the other places). The stuff you get on draught is the usual lager, heavy, cider and Guinness, although there are some bottled ales available. Sadly, one of the pubs (the one I normally frequent) has severely cut its opening hours due to increased costs and I fear that it's the beginning of a very slippery slope for them.

I can get a pint of real ale if I venture into town ('Spoons) but the last bus leaves the village around 7.30pm, which is a bit too early for a night out. The last time I took a taxi home I was around £25, so I'm not prepared to pay that twice.

It's a sad situation because there are a few quite decent local breweries around the area, but transport is so poor.

The Beer Engine Newton st Cyres for me (which I’ve just got back from actually). I love it and I love their beer.

Are you on commission?

 

[birchesgreen]

If by local you mean pubs one can comfortably walk to and (just as important) walk home to then none.

 

[duncanp]

My local is less than five minutes stagger walk away, and is a specialist real ale pub with a constantly rotating choice of twelve real ales and 3 ciders on tap, with an average price of £4 per pint.

It is like living next door to a permanent beer festival

There is also a Greene King pub nearby, plus a specialist craft beer bar further down the High Street.

 

[kristiang85]

We have two pubs in my current village, which has over 5,000 people.

One recently got a ZERO hygiene rating, and when I popped in on Monday night we were the only people in there for the whole hour. It is all in all quite a depressing place to drink.

The other is much nicer, but quite small.

I can't wait to move back into a proper town once our house has finished being renovated, where we will have about five pubs within 10 minutes walking distance.

 

[NorthOxonian]

It's a pretty dire selection round where I live. There's probably about twenty pubs within reasonable walking distance of where I live but very few of them are any good - most of them are seriously dodgy or are a bit pretentious (and overpriced).

Newcastle city centre (which isn't quite in walking distance but there are decent evening buses to get me home as well as night buses on Fridays and Saturdays) is a bit better, in terms of quantity at least, but I wouldn't really choose to drink there either. Compared with most other large cities I've visited, there seem to be noticeably fewer traditional pubs and more bars - which tend to have a pretty poor range of beers, higher prices, and not the sort of atmosphere I'm after.

Unsurprisingly I tend to do most of my drinking when out and about elsewhere in the country!

 

[Big Tim]

I live a mile from York City Centre, so am spoilt for choice. I’m not out much more than a couple of times a month and as rail travel is often involved I have found York Tap has become my most visited watering hole - and probably doesn’t need any further introduction on this forum!

My local pub in the suburbs used to be a great independent venue but is now brewery managed and has apparently had three different managers in the last eight months. It’s north of £5 a pint for generic creamflow beers and lager so not for me, I’m afraid.

 

[dangie]

I live a mile from York City Centre, so am spoilt for choice.…

My favourite pub in York is the Ackhorne. It’s on the ‘other’ side of the river so doesn’t appear to get as busy as those within the City Walls.

 

[Shimbleshanks]

Pubs tend to be slightly few and far between in some parts of suburban south London; the area was developed in the 1920s and 1930s when the authorities had a bit of a downer on pubs and it was hard to get new licences. That said, at the moment we have three pubs within walking distance.
However, my favoured drinking hole, the Wetherspoons is due to be sold by the chain and the future is uncertain. I'm not too fond of the other two pubs as they're large, noisy drinking-barns. We are in the unusual position of the Wetherspoons being the cosy, intimate place - and it has a good selection of real ale at prices half those of the competition.
There are a lot of nice country pubs, but mostly it means driving and limiting yourself to a single pint.
If the Wetherspoons does close, or is replaced by an expensive alternative, I will probably do most of my drinking at home. Bottle-conditioned Marston's Pedigree was on sale in a local Morrisons' for £1 a bottle when I was last there...

 

[Big Tim]

My favourite pub in York is the Ackhorne. It’s on the ‘other’ side of the river so doesn’t appear to get as busy as those within the City Walls.

One of mine too - nicely tucked away from the madness of Micklegate. A bit further up that lane towards South Bank is another “hidden gem” - The Golden Ball.

 

[4COR]

One pub in the village (used to be 2) - Greene King tied, little idea on beer ordering (4 sticks, each one a brown, malty bitter...) and limited ability to keep them really well (too many on at once). Overpriced, food horrendously expensive.

Luckily, we have the cricket club, and I'm in charge of keeping the beer/cellar management/cleaning etc. so we get by (and at £3.80-£4.40 a pint rather than north of £5...)

 

[W-on-Sea]

In a small town with a population of about 13,000 at the most recent census (probably slightly more now).

More pubs than I can count off the top of my head in the town centre (maybe 10?), and a couple a bit further afield. Almost all sell at least one real ale, and three in particular go out of their way to bring in a variety more interesting things, with a good balance between stuff that is brewed locally and from elsewhere. One does real ciders and perries too. But in general, for good food you mostly need to look elsewhere (another town, really!). The atmosphere of each varies a bit, one is a fairly bland chain pub (but has a nice outside drinking area) but the others are mostly independents, a couple play excessively loud music but can be avoided. But the others generally have things to be said in favour of them, I've a couple of favourites, one, an old thatched cottage that is quite barn-like, in a good way, and one that is thoroughly CAMRA old-school linked with its own microbrewery a few miles outside of town. Basically Merrie England lives on here.

 

[yorkie]

Same as @Big Tim, except approaching from the opposite direction (Slug & Lettuce being equidistant!)

 

[dangie]

My favourite pub in York is the Ackhorne. It’s on the ‘other’ side of the river so doesn’t appear to get as busy as those within the City Walls.

Apologies. Just read what I had written.
The Ackhorne is within the city walls, what I meant is that it’s not within the York tourist hotspot area.

 

[Cambus731]

I’m lucky - I live about a mile outside the nearest town, and in it is a pub called, er, The Pub, which has 8 (very) different real ales on handpumps and another 20 or so on keg. And no televisions, and no jukebox / noisy music

Would that be the one in Ramsgate? I was in The Pub there recently.
The other pub I've been in called 'The Pub' is in Braintree. It is crap and the beer is crap. But there has been the odd occasion when it was the only Pub showing the West Ham match.

 

[SuspectUsual]

Would that be the one in Ramsgate? I was in The Pub there recently.

I’m afraid you’re about 280 miles out there

 

[Cambus731]

I’m afraid you’re about 280 miles out there

The only other 'the pub' thatcI know of, although I haven't been in there, is in Todmorden.

 

[SuspectUsual]

The only other 'the pub' thatcI know of, although I haven't been in there, is in Todmorden.

Bingo! And I’m sat in it as I type, with a very nice pint of Schofferhoffer.

(There’s also a branch down the road in Hebden Bridge)

 

[duncanp]

The only other 'the pub' thatcI know of, although I haven't been in there, is in Todmorden.

There are a couple in the Birmingham area "The Pub At Kings Heath" and "The Pub At Bearwood"

Can't say I am a particular fan of them, as they are mostly cheap lager and loud music.

 

[GRALISTAIR]

In Preston Lancs I am spoiled. In Dalton GA I am extremely spoiled. Loads of choice.

Tend to go for Owd Nell’s when in Preston or there is a good one near the Catterall grid feeder on the WCML. In Dalton GA tend to go to Crescent City Tavern or Cherokee Pizza where they brew on the premises.

 

[Cambus731]

There are a couple in the Birmingham area "The Pub At Kings Heath" and "The Pub At Bearwood"

Can't say I am a particular fan of them, as they are mostly cheap lager and loud music.

'The pub' in Braintree is crap. I only went in there because it was the only pub showing the West Ham match. And the last time I went in there to watch a match West Ham lost.