73.
Abingdon Road in the rain, Saturday 23rd October 2004
Abingdon Road is not somewhere to visit by
choice, but Dave and I decided that it would be a good idea to get some of
those pubs put on the list. First up was the Duke of Monmouth which used to
have some very cheap beer. The Greene King IPA was £1.90 a pint which was good,
even for crap like that, and it tasted OK too. Not sure about the Abbot. We
caught the football results in the back bar whilst undesirables were playing
pool. The front bar is much better, almost fit for families, but they had rugby
on when we were there. A reasonable local methinks. In the pouring rain we
marched up the road to the Berkshire, a place that was previously a dive. It's
quite a nice boozer now, though unfortunately two of the three beers had gone
and we had to settle for IPA again; this was quite good but pricey. My only
complaint is that there are not enough comfy seats, but the atmosphere was
quite friendly.
Decent ales were finally located at the
Folly Bridge Inn, which sells Wadworths products and does beer festivals now and
again. On our visit, the beers available were Henry's IPA, 6X and Malt and
Hops, the latter of which was very good, if slightly overpriced. This is the
sort of pub in which I would be happy to settle for an evening as it has a very
relaxed atmosphere. And if one was feeling peckish, one could tuck into the
splendid array of bar snacks, including pickled eggs and onions. A pub that I
had not visited in a long while is the Marlborough House, down the back
streets. Sadly, the vinyl jukebox has now been removed, though this had
survived the refurbishment for a while, unlike the nearly finished bottle of
Campari that I had noted had a congealed sludge of said spirit in the bottom
for at least 3 years. One of the bright spots however is that the back room has
been done out quite nicely, and you could fit a dozen people in there for
uninterrupted drinking. This however is offset by the fact that the beer is
quite extortionate - £2.80 for an Adnams Broadside; I'm not sure what the
Greene King IPA and Adnams Bitter were. It was also served by some wet behind
the ears trendy teen oik. We took an instant dislike to him. Despite these
seemingly bad points, we liked the atmosphere very much and resolved to give
that 5 out of 6 (would have been more but someone wearing a tweed jacket was
watching rugby).
Crossing the river and through the dodgy
flats, we ended up at the Wharf House. Love it or hate it, this is a unique
pub. It is a wooden floored room with a bar in the corner and some sticks of
furniture to sit on. Unless you like your pub to smell of wet dogs and rub
shoulders with drinkers who look like Freddy Kruger's Dad, you're not going to
like the atmosphere in this place. However the beer is excellent, though when
we visited, it wasn't quite as excellent as it had been in the past. As usual,
Hook Norton Best and RCH Pitchfork were on, but there was also York Stonewall
and Vale Grumpling. The pair of pints set us back £3.80 which was a very good
price, and there were also some stupid lagers and some bottled Belgian offerings
to hand. The rest of the pub is a big skank hole although I noticed that
perhaps he had made some sort of effort to tidy the place up a bit, put some
new light bulbs in and possibly paint a little.
Moving up towards Queen Street, we found
ourselves at the Royal Blenheim which has been extensively renovated since its
days as the Blenheim, and there is no rainbow flag either. Everard’s products
were on offer, and the range was good. Equinox, Tiger, Tiger Chilled, Original
and Beacon were all available. The Equinox that we sampled, in pints, was
excellent. I'd never been in there before, but I was pleasantly surprised as
the pub is very smart inside and has some quite unobtrusive TV screens. There
are some comfortable seats too if you can get them. Giving the Old Tom a miss
for its Greene Kingness, we went into the Hobgoblin which was heaving with
blokes who had enormous beer guts and who had presumably tipped out of the beer
festival across the road. They must have heard about the beer. Although it is no
longer at the dirt cheap prices of a few years past, it is still reasonable.
The choice was good: Hyde’s Light, Adnam’s Fisherman, Shires XXX, Tim Taylor
Golden Best, Gales Trafalgar, Hobgoblin, and it was very well kept.
Having seen the beardy beer-gutted
fellows, we popped into the Town Hall to catch the last of the beer festival.
Unfortunately this was winding up and they only had Brakspear left, which we
could not be arsed with, so we had a couple of bottles of Belgian ales instead
as we admired the ornate architecture within. It should be noted however that
there were a considerable number of ales available earlier in the event -
something like 140. Despondent that we had not got any real beer here, we
popped into Far From the Madding Crowd yet again to sample their excellent ale.
Sadly the Wem Green Admiral sampled a few days prior had gone, but adequate
replacement in the form of Hadda's Headbanger and Nelson Hardy's Hell (or
something) presented itself. The Paulaner wheatbeer is also excellent if you
can afford it.
Dan
Lovegrove
dan@doctor-lovegrove.com
Last updated 3rd November 2004.