This is a great little pub, a proper back street local which is friendly enough to passers by. It's split into two halves, with the bar down the middle and it makes a lot of effort with nights devoted to live bands and stand up comedy.
It's in a very quaint sidestreet, just off the main high street but feeling like a million miles away from the hustle and bustle of it all, which is perfect for a pub where you can escape and relax. They have a good range of real ales, which change often enough and now seem to be consistently kept well which is a must for a good pub.
There is a juke box and a dart board, plus a seating area outside which although not huge has had quite a lot of seating space added in providing plenty of seats without feeling too over crowded. There are also a couple of benches out front where you'll also usually find a few locals standing around, giving you the impression that this really is their second home, as the local pub always should be to its loyal locals.
All in all, a charming pub that does make an effort, but there are a couple of things that do knock it down from being a 5 star establishment. One is the TV screens, they have one in each half of the bar but will often show the same sporting event on both, which really seems to spoil the whole advantage of having two separate halves. Often the pub won't even be that busy, so all could comfortably fit in one half, leaving the other for more peaceful drinking. However they don't do this, and if you've made the effort to head up there and are not into sports it can be a real let down to find that there's no space away from them.
Another odd thing, and this is probably harder for them to do anything about, is that very often there's one or two incredibly drunks guys in there - and you could understand this if it was late in the evening but this seems to regularly be the case at about 5 or 6, early in the evening. Quite often they'll be shouting or jumping up and down causing a racket, never in a threatening way but just very out of kilter with the atmosphere in the rest of the pub. I think it's a sign of it being very much a locals' pub, and perhaps this is something the other locals are happy with, but as someone who visits less regularly it really makes the place seem less inviting and certainly not so easy a place to kick back and relax in.
It's definitely a 4 star pub, many excellent reasons to go there but one or two minor foibles that keep it from being a top place. Perhaps they prefer it that way though. read more