Adam's Ales

A Reassuring Message about Adam's Ales

2010-03-29T05:42:00.000-07:00

In response to the lorry-loads of terrified messages I have been getting, demanding to know when the next Adam's Ales outing will be relayed, I should post a Brief Reassuring Message (or BRM):

For the past two months I have been hiding in a secret underground bunker in North Devon woodland, NOT a conifer plantation, planning the second phase of the Adam's Ales project, which has so cleverly and amusingly depicted the modern mood of the local pub. (That's a self-deprecating joke by the way, less regular readers). Ha ha ha.

It's too early to say too much about when the next adventure will take place at this stage, but let's just say experience teaches me it will in all likelihood involve a bicycle, a pub, wonderful beer, awful beer, and weird evenings being chased by some type of hedgerow creature.

So I hope that is reassuring.

And, as the infinity wizards like to say (at least I think it was them), watch this space.

Too many good pubs, too few hours...

2010-01-03T11:19:00.000-08:00

As I look back on more than a year of visiting pubs, many of them superb, I just want to thank all the hard-working landlords and landladies who are running some of the finest pubs in the world in North Devon and Torridge, often for not much money and with quite a bit of hassle. In a nutshell: Long live the local! Good luck to you all in 2010.

"What in the name of holy God is this awful noise?," I asked my friend.

2009-12-23T14:00:00.000-08:00

Taking off my mirrored 2009 Beer Goggles to rub them on my frosty Bath Ales bar towel seems as good a point as any to look back on this journey so far.

And looking back through my reports of visits to a number of pubs, as well as the news files, suggests I have picked up on a battle raging, often underground, in the pub sector - between the corporate big boys, the McPubs, and a cherished English tradition which goes back centuries. Even in a sober moment, it does not seem overly dramatic to say this is a struggle which will transform an important part of the fabric of daily life...

A corporate pub in full fizzle, popular and profitable, often puts me in mind of that lie used by soured lovers the world over: it's not you, it's me.

To give one example, and as the North Devon Journal has already reported, The North Country Inn will re-open as a bar and food place. Nothing wrong with that. In March 2009 I blogged about why I thought that pub, the oldest in town and a handsome building with great cosy pub potential, had not thrived, to say the least.

What about our historical pubs, with their cosy corners and dusty shelves? What about the landlord or landlady who can make a living over a number of years without being squeezed to death by the money wizards? What about local character? These are questions addressed by Camra's latest battle with the OFT (see link earlier this month).

The truth is that when I'm somewhere like the Water Gate, which is the new Wetherspoon's pub on the Strand in Barnstaple, North Devon, I think what those soured lovers are really thinking: it's not me, it's you. And the customer is always right. Right?

Well, that rubs all ways, doesn't it? The gin palaces which have come to dominate English towns are popular, much as I, a pub fanatic, dislike them.

It was 8.30pm on a dank midwinter weekday when I arrived at the Water Gate to meet friends. They had got there before me and were half-way through pints of Christmas ales. I stood at the bar for what felt like half my lifetime while the barstaff, presumably new, tried to cope. As before, I had walked past a few almost-empty local boozers on my way to investigate an unvisited pub. The Water Gate was thrumming.

The beer was good. It always is in a Wetherspoon pub. They do beer like Ronald McDonald does burgers. Consistency is the thing.

But the consistency of the ale quality is mirrored in consistency in everything else; that is what happens with big business, a hangover from the industrial revolution, and manufacturing. The problem is that consistency in a business so closely tied to emotion, community, alcohol, and history can lead to blandness.

A pub should never be bland. A good pub can be cheap, and I believe Wetherspoon's decor and signage are always the epitome of corporate cheapness, in appearance if not in actual cost - but cheap with character.

We took our Christmas ales, which now all have unfunny-funny names like Santa's Testes or Christ Froth, to a table near the dancefloor. A dancefloor. My friends seemed intent on being near the horrific clatter.

"What in the name of holy God is this awful noise?," I asked my friend.

"This is Beyonce," he replied.

It was a name I had read in the broadsheet newspapers and heard on the tongues of excitable radio Five Live presenters. Bee-on-say. But I had before then managed to avoid ever hearing her at full tilt and volume. This was a new and cruel punishment for the privileged western man, I realised. Which sinister backroom broiler dreamed into reality this nightmare? I sipped my Sleighbell Shagger, or whatever it was called, and pondered the scene.

Men in smart slacks with hairstyles were dancing to bee-on-say, trying to lure pretty young women, also with hairstyles. A reasonable human endeavour, of course, but the music prevented Pub Conversation. I felt like I was in the airport lounge of a disturbed and restless outpost. This was not a time and place for men to discuss the finer points of life and death and sport and soured love affairs.

A Hamlet-y blanket of gloom: When is a pub not a pub? To pub or not to pub? But is that the question? After all, people were wedding-dancing and to my trained journalist's eyes they seemed to be having a fine old jig of it. Only a Scrooge would complain about that.

After all this, it is fair to say my love of the traditional English pub is conservative and old-fashioned in some ways but perhaps also chimes with a climate-change enforced future of modest living and a focus on local production and small communities.

The Water Gate is also conservative and old-fashioned in some ways: it provides cheap booze (responsibly, of course), loud music and lots of space to pack in the punters, much as the gin palaces of Victorian era (silly buggers like me complained about them too). The town now has two town centre Wetherspoon's.

Corporate alehouse. Traditional pub. Where is the harm in either type? My theory is that places like the Water Gate draw custom from individual and historical local pubs, which are superior in character and atmosphere and which are something to cherish. They also prevent the resurrection of that type of pub purely because there is only so much beer money to go around in a small town.

In many ways, it's too late. Barnstaple's oldest pub, the North Country Inn, was empty for months after the pub company and/or its tenants were unable to make it thrive. As I say, I have blogged about my visit there during its last, desperate, hours; it was like visiting a dear old relative in a hospice.

There is, however, a good way to improve your pub environment: choose wisely where to spend your money. When there is only one type of pub left, you will not have that privilege.

This battle could really change your pub...

2009-12-23T05:36:00.001-08:00

http://www.camra.org.uk/page.aspx?o=whatsnew1

INTERLUDE: snippets from the pub world in North Devon and Torridge...

2009-12-17T02:17:00.000-08:00

The North Devon Journal and http://www.thisisnorthdevon.co.uk/ has all the best news about the pubs in your community. Here are two key recent snippets:

At the Union Inn at Stibb Cross, near Torrington, Nigel Harris, his wife Sue and his daughters, Tracy and Beverley, who took over the pub in the summer are trying to provide an extra community service. After the recent closure of the shop in nearby Langtree, villagers were having to travel as far as Milton Damerel or Holsworthy. So Nigel and Sue want to convert the pub’s storage room into a shop selling basic provisions such as bread, milk and newspapers. Nigel, a former haulage driver turned publican, is hopeful it will open in January. He has applied for planning permission to Torridge District Council to change the use of the room. He said: “We’re hoping the pub and community shop will work well together because there is nothing else around here to get these sorts of things. “There has been a lot of community support for the idea and so we thought we would try it and see how it goes.” Good luck to the Harris family. Great idea.

The owner of a local Chinese restaurant has taken over the North Country Inn on Mermaid Walk in Barnstaple. Businessman James Li, who owns the Fullam restaurant in Tuly Street, plans to turn the Grade II-listed town centre pub into a cocktail bar and Asian restaurant. Restoration work will probably take six months, Mr Li said. The North Country Inn was one of the oldest pubs in Barnstaple when it closed its doors in spring this year. The pub company who owned it, Enterprise Inns, then put the building on the market. The pub, which was already established by 1764, had been with a number of leaseholders and struggled to attract customers immediately before it closed. Good luck to James but I'm sad the oldest pub in Barnstaple is nothing more than a memory.

INTERLUDE: Twitter

2009-11-19T11:55:00.000-08:00

I'll be tweeting about beer and pubs, among other things, in a personal capacity, on Twitter and you can become a follower at http://twitter.com/ADAMWILSHAW

Gales, sewage, and a giant plastic shark - searching for pub nirvana in Bideford

2009-11-14T11:24:00.000-08:00

A powerful tang of raw sewage was huffing about in the gale on Bideford quay as we got off the bus.

We were already bilious from sitting on the back row during the 40-minute journey from Barnstaple as the storm rocked the vehicle like a dinghy at sea.

There were bits of trees on the road, at least one road traffic accident, and a wintry sense of peril. The BBC news had hysterically told everybody to stay indoors.

On the quay I guessed the heavy rain had caused a sewer to overflow somewhere nearby. Gagging, we pulled our coats over our noses and ran up a hill, searching for an inn with buxom serving wenches, log fires, and an old man abusing a squeezebox.

The rain-lashed streets were empty save for an occasional quartet of teenage boys who stared hard. They probably knew we weren't local. We marched on with a shared dim memory of a decent pub "over there" "near the pannier market".

When we found our destination, The Joiners Arms, it was closed and didn't look like it was going to open (see picture above).

Back downhill.

There were about a dozen punters in Lacey's. I asked for a pint of Firefly bitter and a middle-aged man barfly with the determined look of a man after a smile from a stranger by any means necessary said: "Where's it gone? Where's the firefly? Ha! It's gone! See - I got a smile, didn't I? Didn't I? Where's the firefly?".

We took our pints to a far table. My friend had a pint of Black Boar, a chewy stout. The Firefly was refreshing and light and typical of O'Hanlan's. There was a choice of Country Life Brewery ales on offer (Mr Lacey is Mr Country Life). Despite the exceptional range of beers, I found the place itself on the uncosy side - bright and cool like a European bar or a cafe at a large railway station. Nothing wrong with that but just in a different category to a certain type of traditional English pub.

Our next stop was the best pub of the evening - The Kings Arms on the quay. As soon as we crossed the threshold we were welcome and cheered. Wood. Low ceilings. Beams. Tankards on hooks. Pictures of old boats. Tasselled lampshades. A snug. Conversations. A proper local. No buxom wenches, but you can't have everything on a platter like a fat old king.

My notes record my friend saying his pint of Grenville's Renown, made by the local Jollyboat Brewery, has "a bit of fragrance", and is "quite uplifting compared to the Black Boar. "It's giving me a new reason to live," he apparently then said.

My pint of Exmoor was crafted - velvety with a little bite - calmer and more quaffable than the stronger locally-ubiquitous bottled version.

We then made the courageous error of leaving the Kings Arms to see if there were any other good pubs nearby.

Moments later, stars were collapsing in unknown galaxies as the icecaps melted, and on far-off continents the future dreamweavers of humanity were being born. We, meanwhile, were in Crabby Dick's.

What else can you say about a public house with a giant plastic shark hanging nose-down from the ceiling?

Other threatening creatures became apparent as we took our pints to one of those tall tables with tall stools you get in fastfood takeaways.

The music was horrific tin clatter. There were no cask ales so I had something billed as Guinness and my unlucky pal had some sort of weird-tasting keg bitter. Both scoops were on the wrong side of the line of acceptability, but were just about drink-able, as are many time-wasting beverages.

There were a group of large bouncers on the door but we didn't see any bloodshed. Maybe we were too early.

Someone was nearby wearing a perfume that reminded me of something fatally medicinal...

My notebook records my thoughts in Crabby Dick's thus: "Plastic sharks. My Guinness like watered-down Marmite."

We threw ourselves back into the rainy night and tramped around, looking for ale nirvana. I noticed at least two welcoming little restaurants, which seemed to be busy, but no obvious signs of pubtopia. I bet the two Wetherspoon's pubs in Barnstaple were rammed to the rafters.

Our next potential port of call was dangerously near the squally sewage-scented quay, but bravely we pushed on.

We found Quigley's. We peered in the windows; empty. 10pm on a Friday night. Faintly demoralised, and slightly faint, we walked back up another hill. A string of lights twinkled romantically by the river.

In the shopping area we found the Heavitree Arms, which from the outside looked like an unspoiled, old-fashioned boozer. Could this be the hidden gem we desired on this odyssey?

The music was loud-ish, the ambiance was intangible and the beer tasted of pipe-cleaning disinfectant. We drank about three mouthfuls and left, too lazy to complain.

And that was our pub crawl. Sewage, a brilliant alehouse, a giant plastic shark, a closed boozer, an empty boozer. Beer that tasted like disinfectant. That all sounds a bit honest and realistic and, yes, true and fair.

The Kings Arms was good and it could be we just encountered Bideford on an off-night...

I do not claim we visited every single pub in the town. The Camra beer guide for 2010, which is fallible, recommends no pubs in Bideford.

As we waited at the dark wet bus-stop shortly after 11pm, again eyeballed by a scowling gang of boys, I was thinking that Bideford is a handsome and historically-fascinating town.

You should visit as soon as you can. Hopefully there is a splendid pub somewhere we missed. The good people of Bideford deserve nothing less.

Bideford Pub Crawl

Adam's Ale Rating: 1 out of 5 (the King's Arms deserves 4 out of 5)

Try This: The real ale in the King's Arms or Lacey's.

INTERLUDE: Nuggets from the local pub universe

2009-11-05T08:34:00.000-08:00

ENGLISH PUB TURNED INTO AMERICAN THEMED BAR
A pub in Ilfracombe will be turned into an American-themed sports bar. The Queens Tardis Bar has been bought by Mike Khoo and will re-open on Saturday, December 19. Mr Khoo’s son-in-law, Jay O’Beirne, will manage the new pub. Jay said it would be renamed as Buddy’s Sports Bar, with a blue, red and white colour theme and grilled American food. I genuinely wish them well, but what's wrong with a proper old pub?

THIS IS WHAT PUB LANDLORDING IS ALL ABOUT
A pub landlord is doing a barrel run to raise money for South Molton Rugby Club. Paul Breese, of the Tiverton Inn, in East Street, will carry the 11 gallon barrel on Saturday, November 7, with a musical van and supporters. The run will start at 1.30pm from outside the inn, arriving at the rugby club for the start of Saturday’s game. As far as I know, the barrel will not be full of flaming tar but with pub landlords, you never know.

WHAT WILL THE FUTURE BRING FOR THIS 15TH CENTURY BOOZER?
A 15th century grade two listed Bideford pub is up for sale at £315,000. The Appledore Inn in Chingswell Street is a traditional "drinks-led" community pub that hosts regular quizzes and meat draws. I always think "meat draws" sounds like some kind of medieval torture: it's time for the meat draws for you, you errant lightbrain!

CELEBRITIES I'VE NEVER HEARD-OF HAVE GOOD TASTE IN PUBS AND BEER
A "celebrity" couple were believed be staying in North Devon, my newspaper tells me. Hornblower star Ioan Gruffudd and his actress wife Alice Evans, who appears in hit US series Lost, visited a pub in Mortehoe on Saturday and Sunday with their baby daughter, who was born in September. The couple enjoyed a drink in the Chichester Arms on Saturday and Mr Gruffudd asked staff for a recommended ale. Wise barman Jamie Archer said: “They were very polite and friendly. I recommended Proper Job, an ale from St Austell.” Mr Gruffudd and his wife returned to the pub on Sunday and enjoyed lunch. They reportedly asked to have a bar mat to take away as a memento. Cheeky. Welsh-born Mr Gruffudd, 36, stars as Mister Fantastic in The Fantastic Four and also portrayed Tony Blair in the George Bush biographical film W. Alice Evans, 38, is best known for the character Eloise Hawkings in Lost. I have absolutely no idea who these people are, but Proper Job is a sublime scoop of ale, so well done Jamie.

FILL YOUR BELLIES, FILL YOUR BOOTS, BUT £2.50 SEEMS A BIT TOO CHEAP, EH?
A Combe Martin pub has launched a "winter warmer menu" for people struggling in the recession, with meals on offer for £2.50. The Castle Inn gives people a choice of 11 different meals for just £2.50. The offer, which runs everyday between midday and 9pm and will last until April, also includes any pint of your choice for an added £2.50. Good for him - playing the Wetherspoon's at their own game. I only hope he can win this round.

Is this yet another victory for big business against local communities?

2009-10-22T05:35:00.000-07:00

One of the first rules of investigative journalism, thanks to Watergate, is: follow the money.

Well this blog is clearly a forge of investigative work, ahem, so now the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has this week decided that the landlord-loathed "beer tie", which the pub-owning corporations use to boost their profits (or screw every last penny from their tenants, depending on your opinion) is absolutely fine, how did our loyal friends "the money markets" react?

Shares soared, of course. Because the tie is all about money and people who are all about money. It's not about your local boozer or your genial landlord pulling you a glorious pint of Exmoor Ale or Country Life's Golden Pig. It's not about working pubs which reflect history and community; it's about corporations, spreadsheets, boardrooms, and second homes in France. There are national, even international, margins which must be kept and must be kept to improve dividends.

The news wires are today, October 22, are reporting that shares in Enterprise, which owns loads of pubs round 'ere, gained 19% after the controversial OFT announcement, while Punch went up 12%, and Marston's jumped 4%.

The OFT told the national press in a statement: "The evidence indicates that consumers benefit from a good deal of competition and choice within this sector."

Of course there are universes of meaning within the apparently simple phrase "consumers benefit". Which consumers, how many, and how do they benefit?

My personal opinion, as a consumer who loves the benefits of the English pub with a passion, as I hope this blog shows, is that the tie is an outrage and a scandal. I know some North Devon landlords agree with me.

Camra, which brought a "super complaint" to the OFT, is now appealing to Lord Mandelson to intervene. Maybe like he did with the Post Office? Fat chance.

I'm not a member of Camra but I can only support its ongoing campaign to save the local pub. I hope one day we'll all accept that the pub is not a business like any other, it's a cornerstone of our culture, which shouldn't be subject to the cut-throat vagaries of the Alice in Wonderland stock market.

When it comes to Back Street Boozers, there is Good Ordinary and Bad Ordinary

2009-10-17T01:00:00.000-07:00

The landlord stood behind the bar like the captain of a ship on a warm glassy sea.

No waves, no storms, no icebergs, no monsters, no theme nights, no McDonald's-isation, no pap music.

From the chill autumn evening we went into the Black Horse Inn with a draft of woodsmoke in the air behind us. Such a fine moment: crossing the threshold of an unvisited pub.

If my odyssey so far has taught me owt, answers on a pigeon, it's that there are back street boozers and there are back street boozers (BSBs); they are not all alike. The Black Horse, for example, is pleasingly ordinary. Although its history is said to go back 400 years, or so, the pub has not been preserved in amber or, shudder, Made To Look Old. It is homely without being over-domesticated; clean and tidy without being sterile. It smells invitingly of beer, rather than of stale human bodies, like some ale houses do these days.

There are BSBs which are dipso-magnets, who keep the fires burning with a certain high level of mutually-assured addiction, while others seem to exist on thin air, with never more than two, often fairly unusual, customers at any one time. The best type of BSBs are not like that; they are the ones like the Black Horse: unpretentious but still with a bit of character, friendly, with good beer. The landlord and the customers make the pub, not the decor, or the food menus, or the gardens, or the money wizards in offices on business parks.

When it comes to BSBs, as with any pub in fact, there are perhaps two main categories: Good Ordinary and Bad Ordinary. The Pubco chains, in particular, seem to do things on the cheap and without much soul; they are money people; they have a tendency to make pubs Bad Ordinary. In fact some of them have a tendency to try to knock pubs down and built nasty flats, but that's another story...

The pints of Otter served to our party of three at the Black Horse were poured by the "good captain" behind the bar straight from the cask. If, like me, you have yet to meet a beer which is too bitter, or too hoppy, you might share my feeling that Otter can, if the moon isn't right and you've slept badly, wash down a bit inspid. I was thinking, for comparison, of that superlative pint of Proper Job we had drank down (like lemonade it was so tasty) at the Corner House in Barnstaple the week before.

Still, so few pubs serve beer straight from casks, by gravity, it is always worth trying what is on offer.

We were there on a Friday evening at about 9pm and there were about eight other people there, all probably over the age of 50. There was no loud piped cack, so we could, you know, sit and, you know, TALK TO EACH OTHER!

Why were noisier pubs in Braunton busier that night? Could be lots of reasons. I guess once upon a time the locals immediately near the tucked-away BSB Black Horse would have been slightly less wealthy than they are, at least in property terms, now. The pub has always been a refuge for the English man, and indeed woman, away from home. If home is your obsession, and indeed your money pit, perhaps you're more likely to stay in your over-decorated palace and drink wine from Tesco. Bit of a shot in the dark, that theory, and, to be honest, I have what can only be described as slight drunkenness and zero evidence to back it up. But that's what pubs are all about: thinking and then talking unsubstantiated rubbish without some do-right telling you to Fill In A Reality Form. Take away my Reality Form, I have a Theory! Particularly if the seas are calm - and the tiller's steady.

The Black Horse Inn, Braunton

Adam's Ales Rating: 4 out of 5

Drink This: See what's in the barrel behind the bar

Exmoor gastropub gets another trophy for the cabinet

2009-09-26T06:24:00.000-07:00

The already many-garlanded Masons Arms in Knowstone, Exmoor, has been named Pub of the Year 2010 in the Michelin Eating Out in Pubs guide.

The 13th century inn, with a thatched roof and beamed bar, was originally three cottages built to house the masons as they constructed the village church of St Peter’s.

Chef-owner Mark Dodson spent 12 years as Michel Roux’s head chef at the three Michelin-starred Waterside Inn, Bray-on-Thames.

When the lure of country life proved too strong, Mark and his wife Sarah – who heads the charming front-of-house team – relocated to Devon with their three daughters; achieving a Michelin star for the pub a year later.

Masons Arms website

Is this the beginning of the end for the pubcos?

2009-09-26T06:05:00.000-07:00

Media report today that Punch Taverns has called last orders on 300 of its under-performing premises.

Many of the pubs up for sale are expected to remain as licensed premises, although a "significant number" could be turned into housing or shops, PA is reporting. Punch Taverns, which has around 8,000 pubs in total, said the premises to be sold were from its "turnaround" division of struggling businesses.

Camra has already expressed fears that the sale will attract speculators.

Pubs get it in the neck again from the constabulary while the cost-cutting ultra-cheap booze merchant supermarkets don't get a mention

2009-09-19T06:30:00.000-07:00

North Devon licensees say police are unfairly blaming them for alcohol-related problems in towns - while the cost-cutting supermarkets avoid similar scrutiny, the Journal reports.

Many landlords blame cheap booze deals at supermarkets for an increase over the past decade in severe drunkenness in the street, particularly among underage drinkers.

But the police are targeting nightspots which offer cheap promotional drinks offers in a new campaign.

Paul Netherton, the assistant chief constable of Devon and Cornwall police, has written thus to licensees: “We will take the strongest action possible against premises where promotions encourage people to drink as much as they like for a nominal fee.”

Under the Licensing Act 2003 police can close premises and seek a review of their licence if they are seen to be contributing to crime and disorder.

Barnstaple nightclub Toko offers various promotions, including three-for-one and 99p a drink offers. But staff at the club say they are extremely responsible licensees. They blame cheap supermarket alcohol for most of the problems.

Steven Ridge, manager of Toko, said: “We have very few incidents here and the vast majority of customers behave well and are simply looking for somewhere to have a good night out.

"We provide a safe environment for this and on the small number of occasions where people have had too much to drink, we will refuse to serve them and offer bottles of water instead and where possible help them get a taxi home.

"Most people, especially during these tough economic times, will drink to excess at home having bought alcohol from a supermarket — and once they are in the club we have to deal with the mess.

"I think this police clamp down is a good idea and hope to work closely with them to promote its success.”

Kevin Constantine, owner of both the Queen’s Tardis Bar and Chinese Whisper’s nightclub in Ilfracombe, also believes cheap supermarket alcohol is to blame.

He said: “You can walk into any supermarket and buy as much cheap alcohol as you like. If someone wants to get drunk they will do so — price doesn’t make any difference. We are currently in the process of putting our prices up and as of next week, when new owners take over, the cheapest pint will be £2.”

Kirsty Cresswell is the manager of Quigley’s Custom House in Bideford where between 4pm and 7pm a pint of lager costs £1.79 and cocktails are on a two-for-one offer.

Kirsty also believes licensing restrictions should apply to supermarkets as well as pubs. She said: “For the price of a pint in Quigley’s you can get six cans of lager at a supermarket — why aren’t they being policed like this?

"The current generation of 18 to 25-year-olds have more of a binge drinking culture than previous years. Most will drink at home, necking a lot of alcohol in a short space of time, then come to us and we are having to turn more and more people away at the door for being too drunk. Our drinks offers are monitored closely by our staff and door men and we support this police clamp down.”

It seems November 1976 was a low point for beer drinkers in Devon...

2009-09-13T09:22:00.000-07:00

I blogged here a couple of weeks ago about a fascinating old photograph I found in a 50-year-old book, of a beer brewer in Cornwall, and I went on to speculate about a possible lost golden age of ultra-local ale brewing in the Westcountry, admittedly with scant evidence to bolster my daydreaming.

The book suggested that a thriving beer culture had been wiped out between 1909 and 1959 and replaced by big breweries or nothing at all. The situation then, perhaps, was much worse than it is now, with a number of micro breweries in places like Devon, and new ones starting up all the time (Forge in Hartland, Wizard in Ilfracombe; both making fine beer).

In the same vein, this week I dug out my old paperback copy of Richard Boston's Beer and Skittles, a superb work of journalism about beer and brewing. It was written in the mid-1970s, just as Camra was starting to make noises about the vandalism of our pubs and beer. This was the era when keg lager and keg "bitter" was in the ascendency. Older readers than me might remember something called Watney Red Barrel, perhaps?

In Boston's "pubman's gazetteer", written in November 1976, he says that Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Somerset is "cider country" and "the area as a whole is low in choice as far as beer is concerned." He says Devon does not have a single independent brewery and most of the beer is Courage, Whitbread and Devenish. He says North Devon is "Watney country" and there are few pubs in West Devon because of the influence of the temperence movement there. Some 30 years later, we are clearly far better served with breweries, many of which have been established in the past 10 years or so. We could well be entering a new golden age of local beer...

Boston mentions the Blue Anchor, which I saw in my picture book, and says this: "Geoffrey Richards represents the third generation of his family to brew at the Blue Anchor, which was bought by his grandfather more than 100 years ago. There are two very strong Spingo bitters, as well as special strong brews at Christmas and Easter."

I am delighted, and relieved, to find the following on the Blue Anchor's website:

The Blue Anchor is one of the oldest original Inns in Britain that continues to maintain a working brewery. Dating back to the 15th century, the Inn boasts 600 years of brewing. Originally a monks' rest house, which produced a strong honey based mead, it now produces a variety of 'Spingo Ales' to traditional recipes.

The Inn still retains its original character and has no slot machines or piped music. However, live music is often performed in the skittle alley or main bars. A major feature of the Inn, is the large garden to the rear, with its own bar and BBQ.

Landlords Simon and Kim Stone have been custodians of the Inn since 1993 and have sympathetically improved the brewery, kitchen, skittle alley and beer garden without changing the character or appeal of the Inn.

Blue Anchor website

Pub fanatics name their favourite boozers in North Devon and Torridge...

2009-09-10T06:26:00.000-07:00

The best pubs in North Devon — according to the votes of local real ale fans — have been revealed in a new guidebook.

The pubs are contained in the Campaign for Real Ale’s Good Beer Guide 2010, which is published today.

There are 19 inns, alehouses and pubs in North Devon and Torridge in the guide, as well as five local breweries.

In Barnstaple, two pubs are singled out for praise: The Panniers, in Boutport Street, and The Rolle Quay Inn, on Rolle Quay.

The Panniers is a popular town centre Wetherspoon’s pub, whose landlord is Alan Young. Camra and Wetherspoon’s have a friendly relationship nationally.

The pub giant gives all new and renewing Camra members £20 worth of real ale vouchers to spend in its pubs.

The St Austell Brewery-owned Rolle Quay, next to the River Yeo, is described as a “spacious, well-run, two bar pub” which is handy for the local rugby and football grounds. The landlord there, Chris Bates, is a previous local Camra Pub of The Year winner.

Camra describes its guide as a “masterpiece of local democracy”, because the entries are chosen by local Camra groups.

The guide states: “We begin with the beer. Not roses round the pub lintel, Turkish carpets, sun-dried tomatoes, drizzled olive oil and the temperature of the oak-aged Chardonnay. The guide is committed to pub architecture, history, food, and creature comforts. But, for us, the beer always comes first.

“It has always been our belief that if a publican looks after the cask beer in the cellar then everything else in the pub — from welcome, through food, to the state of the toilets — are likely to receive the same care.”

In April the North Devon Camra branch announced that the Hunters Inn in Heddon Valley was its pub of the year, closely followed by the Castle Inn, in Combe Martin.

Some pubs have been struggling to survive in recent times, with many landlords complaining that the pub companies which own many pubs are squeezing them with higher rents and “tied” drinks prices far more expensive than normal wholesale costs.

There have also been dramatic changes in the pub industry in the past ten years, with the emergence of “gastro pubs” and the popularity of cheap supermarket alcohol.

Politicians, including North Devon MP Nick Harvey, have called for changes in the law to help save our pubs from decimation.

An unpretentious country pub offers hope

2009-09-06T13:11:00.000-07:00

We headed east first, through one of Barnstaple's housing estates, with a fast-setting sun behind us, before wheeling on in to the crepuscular North Devon countryside.

Blocks of flats and prim lawns gave way to sheep-cropped hills, which were greenish then greyish, as a late-summer day turned into an early-autumn night. The thousands of people living in the pub-less housing estate were nowhere to be seen and the country lanes only carried people in motor cars, until we, two pub fanatic outriders, appeared on push bikes, catching flies.

I was keeping a quiet lookout for head-skimming bats, my favourite type, but the only wild beasts on the loose seemed to be unusually-gigantic black birds, which were flying low, indistinct and secretive behind the lowering hedgerows. I thought of a creature I had seen on the Taw estuary earlier that day which looked like a small dinosaur.

For what felt like the first time in months, no rain was falling from the sky. It's uphill as you go north east towards Goodleigh from Barnstaple on the road but the cycling was relatively easy, thanks to the never-ceasing westerly gale which has made the summer months such a joy in the Westcountry this year. My Adam's Ales friend had forgotten to put his lights on his bicycle, so I rode in the rear, illuminating him and the entire road with an unnatural white glow.

His bike was about 30 years younger and £300 more expensive than my old iron horse and he easily sped off on the downhill run. He must have topped 40mph at one point and I feared for his life as he took a sharp right bend without touching his brakes. I cooled it on the corner, having spotted a constabulary vehicle at the junction.

We went to Goodleigh specifically to visit the New Inn, which is listed in this year's Camra Good Beer Guide as a "traditional old village inn" where a "warm welcome" awaits. The New Inn is also know for its good food. So far in this beer odyssey I have been to more town pubs than country pubs, and have, in Barnstaple at least, not been overly pleased with what I have found. Stale corporatism and board room uniformity has infected our public house cultural treasures like woodworm burrows through an old village church.

Like many people, I often turn to the country pub for sanctuary. But the money wizards and pubco vandals, not to mention Taxman, have been playing merry hell with our rural pubs for decades; what good is left? Will places like the Goodleigh local offer any cause for hope?

We put out bikes in the beer garden, wiped the sweat off our faces, and went inside, thirsty as fat men on a merry-go-round. The pub was empty save for a handful of local people, including two well-behaved children, at the bar. The pub did not appear to have been modernised, or "ruined" as I prefer to say, so, like most good old pubs, it was unpretentious and comfortable.

You know you are in a good local when conversations start easily among strangers and the New Inn is that sort of place. There was no fruit machine, jukebox, piped music, or television. The windowframes were made of wood. I felt as if the pub had got to its current state by a long and friendly process of careful and intelligent use by human beings. When I walk in to a McPub I generally get the impression the pub has got to its current state by a brief and ruthless process of careless and shortsighted planning by beancounters emboldened by computer models.

The only small downside was a lack of Devon ale. We drank Cornish Jack, a light, thirst-quenching beer, which is made by Sharp's. This clearly did not fit the "local beer" category, but it was fine, robust, and supremely tasty ale, ideally suited for cyclists and all manner of professional outdoor sportsman. When I went to get the second round, two men were talking about keeping chickens and growing vegetables. If the New Inn was my local, I would be delighted and, more importantly, would make the effort to spend my beer money there.

It is wise to avoid drawing hyperbolic conclusions about the fact that such a very good pub was almost empty on a clear-skied Saturday night in early September; maybe it was just a quiet night. As I later hurtled home through the dark lanes, I hoped the villagers hadn't gone to the Wetherspoon's in Barnstaple, which I knew would be crammed, and which also features, as the vanguard of corporate mediocrity and local dominance, in Camra's Good Beer Guide 2010.

A couple of ales apiece refreshed, and after a discussion about the psychological implications of seeing UFOs, it had been time to leave, with no small sense of reluctance. When we took our pint pots back to the bar, everyone said goodbye.

New Inn, Goodleigh, North Devon

Adam's Ales Rating: 4 out of 5

Drink this: Sharp's Cornish Jack, 3.8%

Wilshaw stumbles on an intriguing suggestion of a "hidden beer history" for the Westcountry...

2009-09-03T09:03:00.000-07:00

Leafing through a book called Devon and Cornwall in Pictures, which was published in 1959, I found an interesting photograph of the Blue Anchor Hotel in Helston, Cornwall.

The picture, apparently of a man in an apron in a beer cellar, caught my eye because it gives one viewpoint of how breweries were faring in those counties at that time, a full half a century ago.

The entry from the book, which was published by Odhams Press, London, reads: "Beer brewing as a local craft was once a feature of life throughout the Duchy of Cornwall.

"There are records of many inns which brewed their own beer, and scores of big farmhouses from end to end of the county were similarly self-sufficient.

"During the last 50 years (that is: since 1909) almost all the inns serving home-brewed beer have been taken over by the big breweries or have at least ceased to make their own brews, until now it is said that the only remaining house of its kind is that in which the picture on the left was taken, the Blue Anchor Hotel at Helston.

"The brewer is drawing off a sample from one of the great vats in which the beer is brewed at this old inn."

If this summary is accurate, and I can't be 100% certain it is, then by the early 1960s, say, an entrenched and highly localised beer culture was obliterated in Cornwall. It follows that if it happened there, it probably happened in Devon too. I find this an extraordinary and intriguing suggestion, not least because an entrenched and highly-localised beer culture is my idea of an idyll on planet Earth, which could be splendid for tastebuds and the environment alike.

I, a bitter-drinking northerner by birth, had always been led to believe that this was cider country, which, to some extent, it certainly was, and still is.

But I do very much like the idea of this "hidden history" of beer brewing and I'd really love to find out more. What type of grain did they use? And what about hops? Wild hops? No hops?

Whether or not any of this farmhouse beer was anything but revolting, of course, is another story. But it can't have been much worse than the can of sweet Marston's Pedigree I had last week.

Pub landlord celebrates new boozer - by getting baptised

2009-09-02T06:21:00.000-07:00

A pub landlord has marked the start of his new life in Appledore with a baptism in the River Torridge, the North Devon Journal reports.

John Tompkins was baptised by the vicar of St Mary’s Church, Rev John Ewington.

John, a former chartered accountant has, with his business partner, just taken over The Champion of Wales pub in Appledore after moving to North Devon from Sussex.

He said: “I’m new to these parts and have had a bit of a journey in the past year. I was about 70% Christian before but am going the whole hog now.

"I thought the baptism would be a way to celebrate my new life in the village. I’m just over 60 and want to spend the rest of my life doing good things."

The remains of the George Hotel in Hatherleigh have raised hundreds of pounds for firefighters...

2009-08-26T06:18:00.000-07:00

The remains of the George Hotel in Hatherleigh have raised hundreds of pounds for firefighters, the North Devon Journal reports.

The 600-year-old pub started to "rise from the ashes" earlier this year with some help from local potter Jane Payne, of Hatherleigh Pottery, who came up with the idea of creating pots and glazing them - using ruins salvaged from the historic pub.

She has already raised more than £200.

Together with her husband Mike, Jane managed to recover some of the smaller pieces of badly charred timber when the pub, which dated back to 1450, went up in flames at Christmas.

More than 100 firemen from across the county were drafted in to help fight the blaze at the coaching inn which was still burning well into the early hours of Christmas Eve.

Jane and Mike were among the crowds watching in horror as the listed building burnt to the ground.

They were re-burnt in the couple’s woodburning stove and then sieved when cold and ground fine with a pestle and mortar. The ash was mixed with a transparent base glaze which covered the small pots.

Jane said: “I was being very cautious because of the limited amount of ash but they all came good when they went into the gas kiln and I was absolutely delighted with the result.”

The £2.5 million rebuild of the George is due to begin in October.

Among the keep fit fanatics, I attend a festival of many local ales

2009-08-23T12:35:00.000-07:00

The idea of holding a beer festival in a temple of fitness certainly appealed to me.

While the keep-fit-on-Friday-night bods were humping bits of iron about and whacking little balls at each other, you could be sipping a fine ale, watching the sun set over a particularly swollen Spring tide (who WAS that man on the big boat with the large beard?).

And why not? Friday evenings gurning in Lyrca are not my idea of fun. (Official medical note: you will die younger if you don't do some form of regular exercise, which can include a weekly moderate session of beer-drinking).

In the cafeteria area of the North Devon Leisure Centre there probably wasn't enough beer to fill a swimming pool, but there was certainly enough to replenish a large outdoor bath: 40 brews, and only 18 not local. I thought back to the recent North Devon Show which had no North Devon beer in its beer tent.

I was accompanied by two cheerful comrades who each voluntarily opted to drink cider. None of our party wore beards that evening, although we had briefly toyed with the idea of wearing heavy hairy disguises. As my companions were both women, the disguises might have come across as jovial, rather than serious, attempts to blend in, so we didn't go incognito in the end.

I drank some good North Devon beer. Again, the Wizard brewery from Ilfracombe seemed to offer something special; its Lundy Gold (4.1%) was clear, refreshing, bitter, and satisfying. Second best was probably Country Life's Golden Pig (4.7%), which is such a startlingly friendly and summery drink that you would probably feel like a fizzly golden piglet after a few of them. I also tried for the first time beers made by Forge, from Hartland, and they were well-structured and quaffable scoops. If you see any of these beers in a pub, you should try them.

To be honest, and fair, I have never been to a beer festival without having at least one beer which I suspect has been included as a joke, given its total repulsiveness, and this occasion was no exception. I had a half of one foul-smelling stinker which looked like it had been scooped out of the River Taw and dosed with caster sugar. But, because I was quite, but not stupidly, trousered, I can't remember which one it was. And, such are the vagaries of the human tongue, someone probably thought it was indeed fine to imbibe in all seriousness. It wasn't from any of the breweries mentioned here.

We left after a good couple of hours of beer exercise at the temple of leisure. Joking aside, I'm not sure the cafe at the leisure centre is the very best venue in terms of atmosphere for a beer festival; the organisers had invited local music acts to perform on a stage, but I kept being distracted by sweaty-looking people in tracksuits (insert joke here). It was interesting to note that this was the least FMAMWBy (fat-middle-aged-men-with-beards-y) ale shindig I'd been to. There were lots of women and younger people there, and very few beards among either group.

There were 20 beers from North Devon on offer. The breweries represented were: Barum, from Barnstaple; Clearwater, from Torrington; Country Life, from Abbotsham; Forge, from Hartland; Jollyboat, from Bideford; and Wizard, from Ilfracombe. There was also cider from Winkleigh. These were complemented by 18 "guest beers" from other parts of England.

A courgette, a banana, plastic window frames, and a lesson from the Holy Land

2009-08-15T11:45:00.000-07:00

You know you're tired when it takes two hours for the thought "why is there a black banana in the fridge" to become "it's not a black banana in the fridge; it's a courgette, a green courgette. I have never seen a black banana in our fridge ever before".

I hadn't had more than four hours of consecutive sleep in about two years, so maybe my guard was down. For what other reason was I about to almost stop loathing plastic windowframes in pubs? And what do you call a run of non-sequiturs?

I had about £7 sterling left in my bank account and, before you judge me, after all the bills were paid and the boy had a new pair of secondhand shoes, and after the usual endless toll of housework-after-work, I decided to go loco and spend all my "spare" loot on ale in local pubs. You should do the same if you're ever in the same twist. What else are you going to do? Buy two "meal deals" from a chemist? I don't think so, chico.

We set off, pockets full of valued metal, my friend and I, amid the amber dying of a midsummer North Devon Saturday. The severe British recession, caused, I thought as I strolled cheerfully along, by a ludicrous and disgusting property bubble and its greedy spivs, had not abated since our last Adam's Ales investigation in Barnstaple, despite our government attempting to reinflate the ludicrous and disgusting property bubble by giving all our money to the greedy spivs who naffed it all up in the first place, and, as before, many pubs were half-empty; I don't think they will, alas, all survive the year.

We walked past a former dive by the riverfront which Wetherspoon's are refitting and turning into their second pub in the town. As I have mentioned before, Wetherspoon's will survive anything; they are unfailingly popular, like Tesco. What else is there to say?

INTERLUDE...I was once sleeping in a hot hovel, a bit like a cave, in Jerusalem, when a red beetle buzzed heavily on to my bed. I whacked it and slammed it with my boot but the biting creature was totally indestructible. That's not a non sequitur; that's a lesson from nature. The lesson is: even the insects are awkward in the holy land...INTERLUDE ENDS

Anyway, enough of those memories of the holy land. Pubs are where English men and women should be able to talk freely (as long as they aren't talking about house prices). At the risk of starting another interlude, imagine keeping a tally of the topics of conversation in North Devon pubs in one hour of one evening. It would provide unique anthropological data and a snapshot of our lives. Entry One: Wilshaw is condemning the idea of using homes as investment vehicles. Anyway, enough of those anthropological studies and interludes; they are nearly as relevant as the immortal beetles of Jerusalem. Back to the courgette.

Of course I always knew of the Windsor Arms in Bradiford, a village on the outskirts of town. I live nearby and have been past the place many times. I have always been struck by the plastic windowframes. Now I was forced to confront my irrational dislike of PVC windowframes in public houses, particularly old country alehouses.

I know, I know, I know. Plastic is cheaper, lasts longer, gives better weather protection, and pubs have hardly got any spare cash to lavish on wooden sash window frames. I know. I know I'm a bit of a fanatic when it comes to plastic windowframes in pubs. In short, I hate them as much as I would a PVC frame in the local Victorian church.

But, I will say this: the Windsor Arms is one of the best pubs around. It is a Proper Local, with character and decent beer, as well as a cosy and unpretentious decor and atmosphere, not to mention the superb shove ha'penny. You should go there without question, my friends. They had Barum on draft from the nearby Pilton brewery of the same name, as well as a refreshing and well-cellared scoop of London Pride. Depressingly, the pub was almost deserted when we arrived at peak drinking time. Was everyone in Wetherspoon's or drinking beer from Tesco at home? We also called in for one at the Corner House in the town centre, which, I am glad to say, was packed out in full 1970s-style boozer mode. I've written about that place before, so I won't go on. If you want to pretend you are in an episode of Life on Mars, it's the place for you. It's great.

And it's strange how things are not always as they might at first seem. The next day I looked in the fridge and just could not believe my peepers. There, as bold as busts of Blair and Bush on a brass bedpost, was a black banana on one shelf and a courgette on another. This could only be a lesson from nature and the lesson was...er, hang on...

The Windsor Arms, Bradiford, Barnstaple

Adam's Ale Rating: 4 out of 5

Drink This: Barum Original or London Pride

Return to home-cooked food at rural Torridge pub

2009-08-13T06:16:00.000-07:00

The new chef at the Green Dragon Pub in Langtree, Karen Knight, has brought her speciality home cooked pub food to the menu.

Colin Edworthy, landlord of the Green Dragon, said he is excited by the fresh ideas and high standards she is bringing to his pub.

Karen said: ‘We are working on an exclusive menu which will see daily home cooked specials alongside customer favourites, such as steaks, gammon and fresh fish. In addition there are plans to install a carvery, and also a lunch menu for just £5.95.”

Bookings: 01805 601342.

I am asked to leave...

2009-06-20T09:40:00.000-07:00

There is nothing large or smart about being barred from a public house. I was once told never to darken the doors ever again of a certain pub in Lancashire after I mistakenly disputed a bar bill which contained apparent evidence of the consumption of a number of pints of ale, not to mention single malt whisky chasers and fine Cuban cigars. Even now, I'm not entirely sure who had consumed all those drinks and smokes, but there certainly was a collection of empty glasses on our table and a number of cellophane cigar wrappers in our ashtray. And I think we were smoking cigars. Either way, I was a youth, roaring drunk, and certain of my case. In short, I was being an arse. I had to leave. There is nothing big or clever about being barred from a public house.

I imagine that most of the people who are barred from pubs fully deserve their sanction.

I'm thinking of the sort of wiry fellows who like to fill their veins with super-lunatic lager on match days before stripping to the waist and throwing metal shop signs through a high street window. I saw that happen once. Or the sort of lethal fool who throws glasses. A New Labour politician might say something like: "These people have no place in the pubs of our dreams, only the inns of our nightmares." I can, for once, only agree.

Anyway, I was asked to leave a pub the other night.

Not because I was violent or abusive or so shot I couldn't breathe properly. No. I was asked to leave a pub for...

...training!

That's right: training.

I was in the beer garden of the Tarka Inn, which is on the main road between Braunton and Barnstaple, one fine recent Sunday evening having a pint with my father; I only see him about once a year because he lives "upcountry", as they say around here.

The beer was good at the Tarka, the sun was still beaming away and I had only just started to explain my intensely fascinating architectural analysis of the Tarka Inn's castle-like squat dominance by the Taw estuary and the relative merits of a benignly-neglected country local compared to a corporate tourist pub when a young lad in a smart shirt came outside and said we had time for a quick last pint because they were closing. It was about 9pm. I asked the barman why they were closing and he said: "For staff training".

We weren't bovvered about being asked to leave the pub restaurant (which is owned by the chain Vintage Inns), even if it was "for training", it was just a new experience. Superb pint of Timothy Taylor, by the way.

The Tarka Inn, Heanton, North Devon

Adam's Ale Rating: 2 out of 5

Drink This: Timothy Taylor (if it's on)

Tributes for North Devon landlord

2009-06-04T04:54:00.001-07:00

Tributes have been paid to a former Torrington landlord and community stalwart. John Boyd, known as Jack in the town, died on Monday May 18 aged 80. You can read an obituary here: http://www.thisisnorthdevon.co.uk/news/Death-landlord-Admiral-Vernon/article-1044773-detail/article.html

Tributes for North Devon landlord

2009-06-04T04:54:00.000-07:00

Tributes have been paid to a former Torrington landlord and community stalwart. John Boyd, known as Jack in the town, died on Monday May 18 aged 80.

http://www.thisisnorthdevon.co.uk/news/Death-landlord-Admiral-Vernon/article-1044773-detail/article.html

I am mysteriously rewarded after attending a bingo night

2009-06-02T11:51:00.001-07:00

I was only half-concentrating on my bingo sheet when I felt an urgent little tug on my shirt sleeve.

I glanced away from the tugger and looked at the next table, where a burly fellow with a Midlands accent and a girly drink (Barcadi Breezer) lifted his eyes from his bingo sheet, which seemed tragically bereft of crossed-out numbers, and looked at me as if I had kicked his favourite springer spaniel in the face.

Dangling my Biro of fate in my hot hand, I realised the whole packed-out holiday camp hall had stopped its tense muttering and was basking in a shared semi-drunken state of nervous silence. The melancholic remains of a blown dandelion clock hung in the late-evening air by the doorway, buffeted to stillness by the heat of contest rising from the bingo tribe.

Another tug on my shirt sleeve. Yes, yes, yes, I muttered...I had...won, won, won my companion was telling me. Here! A winner! Then she was waving my bingo sheet in the air and screaming "over here! over here!" at the young girl who was calling out the numbers on the stage.

The harassed girl walked down from behind her digital number machine to assess my claim of victory. Feeling I was an unworthy winner, partly because of my lack of love for the game of bingo and partly because I wasn't actually on holiday at the camp, I drained the final mouthful of a very average pint of Guinness.

Yes, there was bingo, a woman dressed as a giant beachball, and lots of screaming, running-about children, but no real ale on offer at the bar of the Golden Coast holiday camp near Woolacombe that day. Everyone was enjoying themselves, of course, and it's a splendid place to go on holiday, but I needed to celebrate my win with something reeking of the green growth of North Devon hedgerows, of hops, malt and, perhaps, the finest brewing genius known to the modern age. So, after collecting my £30 bingo winnings, and checking over my shoulder for bitter losers, I repaired to the nearby pub.

It was good to get away from the blaring disco in to the cooling North Devon early summer dusk and it was only a few minutes stroll to The Old Mill, which is in the peculiar position of being a bone fide 17th century pub all but inside a modern holiday camp on the Butlin's model. I couldn't resist walking a bit further up the lane first, just to look at the hedgerows exploding with complex life. I briefly contemplated fleeing to Benidorm with my bingo winnings, but thought better of it.

The Old Mill, large and rambling, is pleasingly ordinary inside; no signs of anxious modernisation or domestication (silly bits of twigs in designer vases were absent, praise be). It is certainly a Tourism Pub, but that isn't always a Bad Thing, although we had eaten at the pub the previous day and the food, I have to say, was lacking in quality or inspiration. What about the beer?

I took my pint of Lundy Gold, made by the Wizard Brewery in Ilfracombe, up to the "top" beer garden, away from the monkey enclosure (or "children's play area" as some people insist on calling it), all the better to take in the sun dappled pastures on the horizon. I wasn't desperate for peace and quiet, like some kind of No Ball Games killjoy, which is a good job because I was sat under a tree bristling with a large and precarious-looking nest of young squawky birds (tell me if this gets too technical, any naturalists among you). Meanwhile, down in the "lower" beer garden a smart woman was crooning along to a backing CD, but not in an offensive "I'm Whitney Houston" way, so I was mostly able to ignore her.

At first, the boy stayed asleep in his pram. It had been a manic day, what with all the swimming, dancing, trying to leap down stairs-ing and frightening parents-ing, and then the unforgiving pride of having a bingo winner for a father. But as I took my second sip of Lundy Gold the boy started to make the time honoured "Father, are you enjoying a moment of reflection with a pint of fine ale?" pram moan.

I don't think it was just the sunshine making me think that that Lundy Gold was one of the best pints of beer I have ever tasted. Wizard are punching well above their weight when it comes to quality and taste inspiration; the brew was light, bitter, refreshing, and clean tasting; it had just enough bite but didn't feel too tangy, knockout and lager-y like some similar beers. I immediately wanted to drink at least three more pints and wait for the bats to come out, but the "Father, are you enjoying a moment of reflection with a pint of fine ale?" pram moan became insistent and we had to leave.

Back at the camp hall, my bingo companions were enjoying a nightcap and the disco was in a full handclap mania, but the boy needed to go to bed so we couldn't stay and listen to the Gummy Bear Song again (is the excuse I used to flee the hideous clatter).

All the noise overload started me thinking about the noises of pubs in general: the "shhh, your bloody drink is coming" of the pump, the swish of a man escaping his duty to replace a spilled three-quarter full pint, the harumph of the real ale snob...

I want the pub to be an ageless refuge from the hum and humdrum of work and duty, a place where we can watch the sky and wait for the bats, or have a pointless argument about politics or cricket or what counts as a "girly drink", because, in the end, I claim, we all need space, man. Which is why I'm writing this blog post in the front passenger seat of my car, in my garage.

The Old Mill, Woolacombe

Adam's Ale Rating: 3 out of 5 (loses a point for average food)

Drink This: Anything by the Wizard brewery or Exmoor Ale

ALE FLASH! Country Pub Re-Opens...

2009-06-01T04:58:00.000-07:00

A 12th Century pub near Bideford has re-opened after being closed for two years. The Bell Inn in Monkleigh has opened under the new management of Jackie Daniels, 45, the former owner of the Green Dragon in Langtree.

I visit a Devon pub with a Thai flavour and the Beer Spill Rule (BSR) is ignored

2009-05-26T03:22:00.000-07:00

We cycled home on the footpath next to the River Taw in the late-May dusk with bats circling overhead and moths flickering past our ears. What finer way to end an evening of serious journalism than with a straight empty path unfolding before you at speed under the powerful glare of a bicycle headlight in the North Devon countryside?

And the salty estuary breeze drying the spilled beer on your clothes....

A couple of hours earlier, we had arrived at the George Hotel in Braunton, where it had been a pleasant surprise to find half-a-dozen people who were originally from Thailand standing in the airy bar. In fact, it was a pleasant surprise to find a half-a-dozen people standing at a bar in North Devon on a midweek night, full stop, given some of the "Mary Celeste" alehouses I have visited and walked by during my odyssey in recent months.

But the Thais were workers, not customers; in common with a number of public houses, the George, which dominates a corner on the main road through the centre of Braunton, is heavily marketing its food, in this case, from Thailand, and it has clearly decided to do so as authentically as possible.

And this seems to be the trend at the moment: it's either "traditional English grub" or Asian cooking, and quite often a mixture of the two. (A smartypants - don't know any of them! - would here point out that what we call "Indian" food in England is in fact an English version of some types of Indian food which would be unrecognizable to the majority of the millions of people in that nation. Yes, but so what? My belly is still not convinced that real ale and curry are the best of companions, no matter how "authentic" it is).

I do love the spicy complexities, and subtleties, of Thai food and living in one of the least ethnically-diverse corners of the wild westcountry, it is always good to see and meet people from other countries and cultures. Unfortunately, we had already eaten, so did not sample the menu, although I am told by a reliable source it is good and also includes traditional English dishes, or examples of "fayre", as pubs will insist on calling them.

Apart from the Thai kitchen and bar staff, there were only four other punters and because the George is a big pub, it did feel a bit empty. I ordered a pint of the ubiquitous Tribute (very good) and we played a game of pool.

The George, an elegant inn which was built in 1929, has been recently refurbished. There are cushions on leathery sofas, a large screen showing sport, and those large-stems-in-vases things (you know, twigs and stuff) which seem so popular these days.

The bar room at the corner of the pub still has a pleasantly wooden old-fashioned feel, but there is a certain feeling of the place being modernised. I guess the pub is partly in line with the Victorian pub era, when homely chintz was the order of the day. I love those chaotic-looking Victorian pubs, with their collections of moths in frames and pictures of cricket players sporting handlebar moustaches; few of them have survived the corporate onslaught of the pubcos since the 1960s, even if bad facsimiles seem to be on every high street in the queendom. The men's lavs at the George, however, were pleasingly chipped and tatty, and very RED. I am disappointed to say there were plastic windowframes at the rear of the building.

Every now and then one of the Thai kitchen staff would emerge from the back room and anxiously check the football scores on the big screen. My friend sparked up a conversation; the chef didn't seem to speak much English but he knew which team he wanted to win (I'll give you a clue: they're from Manchester and they win everything).

While my friend and I were deciding once and for all that test cricket was the best sport because it is the most absurd sport, someone accidentally knocked over my friend's almost-full pint. The spiller apologised, not least for soaking me, but then did not offer to buy a replacement.

Now. I could write you 500 words on the finer details of pub culture and behaviour and the rights and wrongs of beer spillage, apologies, replacement pints and so on, but I always thought it was a given that you at least offer to buy a replacement, even if that offer is graciously refused.

But there was no offer. And that's just not cricket.

The George Hotel, Braunton

Adam's Ales rating: 3 out of 5

Drink this: Tribute

A pub with a "reward card"

2009-05-25T11:36:00.000-07:00

I hear that Lacey's Ale and Cider House in Bridge Street, Bideford, North Devon, is offering a type of reward card to drinkers of the Country Life microbrewery's real ales (which are brewed by Mr Lacey). I haven't had chance to take part yet myself, or indeed to write about Lacey's, but I understand that the card is stamped each time you buy a pint of the real ale and a certain number of stamps means a reward. This sounds like a splendid idea and should help persuade people to sample the Country Life beers (brewed at the Big Sheep tourist attraction near Bideford) which I have found to be among the best beers I have tasted anywhere; the brews were star performers at the recent Ilfracombe beer festival and are becoming firm favourites at pubs in North Devon.

Landlords go to parliament for a "fair pint"

2009-05-16T07:07:00.000-07:00

At a time when a revolt is seething over the MP expenses scandal, it seems appropriate that another system which seems to be designed to benefit distant men and women in suits, rather than local communities, is under the spotlight: the tied pub sector.

The landlord or landlady of a tied pub, of which there are many in North Devon, is in some ways similar to the franchisee of an American fast food chain; they work for a corporation who controls their everyday business from afar, purely for profit.

Yes, a tied landlord might have more freedom than a McDonald's manager to change some aspects of their business, such as decor for example, but, crucially, they cannot buy stock direct from wholesalers. And there is the rub: if you are in charge of a tied house, you are forced to buy your beer via the pubco you work for, who charge you a higher rate, and that will be on top of the "rent" which always seems to be rising well above inflation. And that's before we get on to the "pub" firms who, entirely legally, apply to have pubs demolished or turned in to flats.

Well, the system might seem ludicrous and unfair, but many businesses are like that and remain highly profitable and popular. But the tied sector does not seem to be working. Pubs are closing at record rates. A national institution seems in peril. Landlords are quitting because they can't make a decent living and local people are losing something which should be their birthright, not an optional extra. Not an extra because proper local pubs are much more than businesses; they are community centres, historical gems, nourishment for the soul and icons of English history: they are too precious and imperfect and invaluable (in all senses of that word) to be left to certain decisions by certain philistine corporations.

Publicans, usually a conservative tribe by nature, are so fed up they are planning to take their battle to parliament this week, to meet MPs and lobby for an end to the tie system. Brian Jacobs, a founder member of the Fair Pint Campaign, has said: "For too long the voice of tenants hasn’t been heard at Westminster." Well it will be now, and our luxury-loving MPs should find themselves in a listening frame of mind.

Strange times, but this problem is not a new one. By the mid-1970s, a contemporary book reveals, when the current tied house system was cemented, the number of brewers in the UK had shrank from thousands in the Victorian era to a mere dozens, following the natural business tendency to concentrate, rather than proliferate, variety. This is when the Campaign for Real Ale (Camra) (I am not a member) started to fight back. It is only in the past five or ten years that the microbrewery boom has begun to significantly redress the imbalance which had been in favour of the giant brewers and pubcos; I think it is fair to say we are living in the best time for beer for many, many decades, while, paradoxically, many of our pubs are in crisis, for a variety of reasons, not just the pubcos.

Landlords of tied houses in North Devon have told me that they are being squeezed by the pubcos until the bottle corks squeak. Of course, the pubco suits wheeled on to national radio programmes disagree with the complaints and claim they provide the opportunity for landlords to make a decent living, and without taking on 100% of the risk of any business. I'm sure some pub managers do well out of the deal. There is disagreement about how badly tied landlords are paid; they claim it can be £12,000 a year for a 100-hour week, while the pubcos say it is usually more than double that amount, excluding free accommodation at the pub.

Other people connected with the pub trade have told me a fair-enough "shake out" is going on in the industry and some of the landlords who fail will deserve to fail, perhaps a small minority were incompetent, or even lazy, or simply providing a service nobody wanted to use, no matter how much they strained their sinews to succeed. I think it is fair to say we do not have an overall shortage of pubs in England; we do, however, in my ever-growing experience have a shortage of top drawer pubs.

In the end I find it hard to argue with the landlords who say they should have the choice not to be tied to a pubco's every demand and whim. Why should they? And, after all, when it comes to fairness, and who owes who what, what have the pubcos ever done for us? Yes, I agree with the pubcos when they say they are not the entire cause of the woes of the English pub, but they are hardly the fountains of joy either. There are too many medicore or downright godawful pubs in all corners of the country, and the causes of their unpleasantness might well be many, but I can't remember the last time I went in to a free house that deserved to close.

Good news - fire ravaged pub will re-open.

2009-05-14T12:45:00.000-07:00

Good to see that the Hoops Inn at Horns Cross will re-open in June, just weeks after the fire.

The 13th century North Devon thatched country pub was severely damaged by a blaze on March 23.

Well done to our firefighters for their quick and brave work - and good luck to owners Dee and Gerry Goodwin. If you're in that neck of the woods, why not stop by and have a look at the new roof before you have a drink or something to eat. I've not it made it there yet, but it's on my (admittedly long) list...

A modern pub for tourists on a busy roundabout inspires me go loco with commas

2009-05-07T12:11:00.000-07:00

At the big roundabout, a sort of traffic island, if you will, there stands the public house Cook Island, which is dedicated to holidaymakers and daytrippers, who we love and hate, don't we?, even though how many of us have never been a holidaymaker?, if you will, where the emphasis is on food, like fish pie with lots of cheese, which people like, I saw them eating it, although I think cheese and fish should not be combined in this reality, it's an opinion, we're allowed them still aren't we?, or did I miss a new law, or a question for Bertrand Russell, or maybe Peter Cook, or a cab driver, or a combination of those people, and children are welcomed with a play area, but children, and I should know, like to use play areas as tactical planning rooms for wider assaults on the adult world, and go in those places like millionaire cigar fiends go in velvet-cloaked airport humidors in balmy south American airports, sunglassed eyes seamy with ruinous missions, maybe we should just lighten up, and maybe stop writing in sentences, let's see how it goes, well, like this, oh, yes, let's keep going a bit more, Cook Island, wasn't it?, and where there is an estate of wooden chalets next door, some of which seemed to be on sale for more than £100,000, which is more than I can afford to spend on a home for my family, like many people, I chortled as I 'tucked in' to my burger, it's always 'tucking in' with food journalists isn't it?, does anyone ever 'tuck in' in real life? apart from at bedtime, when it's vital, particularly in a chilly house, where the ice is inside the windows, a cliche, that once happened to me in my life, to almost misquote Morrissey again, which has happened before during this pub odyssey, so I was 'tucking in' and thinking about these wood palace chalets, and chortling, in a chippy sort of way, and thought is it time for a revolution?, maybe, does my son mind?, no he was plotting in the playroom, he likes throwing knives at the moment, tucking them in to passing innocents, like me, which I do not tolerate at home or in public houses, including in Cook Island, where the building is modern, in my view rather plain, not modernist like stream of consciousness writers, who can get tiresome, if they don't use full stops, people get narked, but anyway, sparking my prejudice against modern pubs, where does it come from, this prejudice?, people are more important than windowframes, you lunatic, although the windowframes didn't seem plastic, phew, I found myself staring, somewhat strangely, in both senses of the word, or maybe more, staring at the main road through a picture of the statue of liberty on the window, again a symbol, in one sense, of revolution, and sipping the Exmoor Ale, which was tasty, correct temperature, and the food was acceptable, and the staff who served it were extremely friendly, if friendliness can be extreme, a terrifying thought, and I started thinking about old Cook swinging around the world, stealing islands, that's what he did, wasn't it?, Cook, or Cookie as he soon became in my mind, as I took a stroll around the chalet estate, old brother Cookie who died 10 years before the storming of the Bastille, you're lucky I'm ending this now, I could go on all night, yes the end comma is deliberate, quite deliberate,

Cook Island, Mullacott Cross, near Ilfracombe, North Devon
Adam's Ale rating: 2 out of 5
Drink this: Exmoor Ale

A beer festival in Ilfracombe

2009-05-05T07:08:00.001-07:00

By the time we got to the Ilfracombe beer festival at the twin-chimney Landmark theatre, a high, cool, breeze and spitting rain had sent the stragglers inside, where the bar had already sold 3,600 pints in a weekend.

Charmain Lovett, the festival organiser, poured us each a half of Golden Pig, a tasty product of North Devon’s superb Country Life Brewery. She was jovial — and wearing a crown of leaves from the earlier pagan parade.

The festival had started on Friday last week and when we arrived, late on Monday afternoon, the bar had already sold 50 barrels of beer and the 33 remaining barrels gradually emptied as the day went on. There was a Sunday-ish end-of-the-road feeling to proceedings when we arrived, which continued when we took a stroll around the town to get food; up the hill past the boarded-up social club and the almost-deserted streets.

Because real ale is a "live" product, it does not keep for long, and one of the features of the beer festivals I have been to is that the prices tend to go down towards the end of the event. So, when we arrived all pints were £3. Then, a couple of hours later that were £2. And when we leaving, they were £1. The morning after, I’m not sure my brain was entirely grateful for the ramifications of this price deflation.

Each of the beers we had was singular. An ale called Devonshire, also made by Bideford’s Country Life, had been the most popular beer, Charmaine said. Luckily for me, the Devonshire had all been drunk. Lucky because Devonshire has a challenging alcohol content of 10%.

Instead we had a try of Anniversary Ale, from the Branscombe Vale brewery in Seaton. The notes say it is a "well balanced amber-coloured bitter", which is, I have to say, quite true. I see I have scrawled "a splendid ale" in my notes.

Outside, a handful of people were bravely making the best of the dank weather, including some children on a bouncy castle, which was deflated and taken away while we were inside the Landmark theatre, in a slightly muggy room, listening to a musical folk duo called Fiddlebix.

We each enjoyed a glorious half of Golden Seahawk from the Cotleigh brewery in Wivilescombe while Fiddlebix — man with guitar and woman with fiddle — performed a version of the Dire Straits epic Romeo and Juliet. Then the guitarist said: "I’m going to play another Mongolian tune" and my friend appeared with two halves of Cavalier Ale, made by the Clearwater Brewery. He tasted it and said: "You can tell it’s from Torrington".

Unfortunately it was dark and "the burger man" had gone home when we buffooned out towards the bus stop. My friend fell asleep on the journey home while I was thinking of ways to describe beer that didn’t involve the word "splendid". The next morning, I was again faced with the strange fact that I had drank "only" "about" four pints ("about" eight halves) but felt like a million pain devils were stabbing miniature wands of misery in to the back of my eyeballs. William Blake said the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. Well if the palace of wisdom is a nausea-rocked place of mindless horror at 7am on a weekday, he was, in a way, spot on.

Have I been here before?

2009-04-29T01:00:00.000-07:00

I was sober enough to realise we had not wandered in to a Chinese restaurant by mistake, even if there was a large fish tank by the front door. And sober enough not to wander in to the tank, either.

The name sounded traditional: the White Horse. But this pub, newly refurbed and reopened, was more inkeeping (forgive me) with the high streets of modern Britain. There was a DJ in the corner, and a feeling of space in the main body of the pub, perfect for standing-up gathering, rather than, say, dominos.

There were smart black faux-leather chairs, flatscreen televisions showing sport. Quite a few punters about for a weekday night at 7.30pm. The place was ticking boxes.

The Tribute served was superb, top drawer in fact, but I felt I could have been drinking it in any similar high street bar in any high street in England.

The White Horse, Boutport Street, Barnstaple, North Devon

Adam's Ale rating: 2 out of 5

Drink this: Tribute

Facebook and ale

2009-04-22T12:13:00.000-07:00

I have created a Facebook group for this blog, which anyone can join (you don't have to be my "friend"). Just search for "Adam's Ale" on the Facebook site and sign up. I'm hoping it will become the most illuminating and thought-provoking Facebook group linked to one man's bittersweet pub odyssey around North Devon and beyond - certainly this year, anyway.

Facebook

Camra names North Devon pub of year runner-up

2009-04-14T04:57:00.001-07:00

A VILLAGE inn run by a retired aircraft engineer has been named the runner-up in Camra’s North Devon pub of the year contest.

The Castle Inn, in Combe Martin, took second place in the annual awards, behind the much-loved Hunters Inn, in nearby Heddon Valley.

The Castle, which is a free house not tied to any brewery, is owned by 54-year-old Allan Stephenson, who went into the hostelry game after a career at Westland Aircraft in Yeovil.
Friendly

Camra (the Campaign for Real Ale) said the Castle Inn served consistently good quality ales in a friendly atmosphere, and had good staff with a knowledge of beer.

Allan, who also lives in the High Street pub, said he looked at hundreds of pubs before choosing the Castle six years ago.

"It was a case of I had had enough of what I was doing and wanted a lifestyle change. We toured all over the place for pubs and the Castle was very friendly," he said.

He said much of his success was down to the ever-changing roster of quality ales he $; there are never fewer than four different beers on offer, including many brews from North Devon and the West Country. Many of the beers on offer are seasonal.

Allan said: "We are a friendly pub. We get some holidaymakers and I’m in the Camra guide, so we get a lot of trade from that. We also do food and I have a 150-seat function room."

The Castle, a relatively large pub for a rural area, has existed in some form for hundreds of years, Allan, said, although he was unsure of the finer details of its convoluted history.

He knows that the current building is made up of a "mismatch" from various eras, which helps to give it its unique character.

"It was an old coaching inn and at one point there was a bakery," he said.

There are regular music nights at the Castle and Allan, who has a late licence, is open every day of the year apart from Christmas day.

Although he said the pub had suffered a recent downturn in takings, like many other pubs in the UK, he hoped a spell of good weather this summer would tempt in a steady flow of customers. He certainly guarantees a superb pint of beer.

From the North Devon Journal.

A peacock gives me the evil eyes in a remote valley where the gilded agers once danced in the dew-flecked gaslight

2009-04-13T12:11:00.000-07:00

The peacock seemed to want to get near me.

Maybe the many evil-eyed creature wanted to get me for some mysterious slight, I thought, as I took another mouthful of ale and pretended not to jump when the beast boomed in the late afternoon like a wild boar at slaughter hour.

There is something about close range large birds which makes me think about self defence, and when I'm in the corner of a beer garden in a steep wooded valley in remote North Devon I know full well the air ambulance could take time to get here. And there would be a scene if I had to wrestle the animal.

But the large strolling peacock was not intent on violence. He found a scrap of bread on the ground and fluttered up to a low roof, from where he watched me. We had reached an accommodation.

I already knew a lot about the pub, but not about the peacocks. Advertising and anticipation can ruin, with good reason, any element of well-I-never-did-see in any pub visit. Once you have been told a certain pub is the greatest creation since eden itself, there is little you can do to avoid trying to demolish that assertion. Human nature being what it is - clever, forgiving, rational - you can't help making up your own mind, which always means clawing holes in the well-knit arguments of the advocates...

And so before I even crept down winding high-hedge lanes to a hidden valley between Lynton and Combe Martin, to pay a visit to the Camra North Devon Pub Of The Year, the Hunters (no apostrophe on the sign) Inn, I was already filled with the type of prejudicial thoughts reporters often carry in their heads, but must always discard.

The beards at Camra (I mean it fondly, gentlemen) are rarely wrong about beer quality, but I have been to Camra-loved alehouses (not in the Westcountry) brimming with as much chummy cheer as a pox-riven yacht scoot to Hades, the home of the departed spirits.

The Hunters Inn, the landlord told me, had been the site of an inn for centuries and was once a haunt of the gilded age, before the late-1960s, when the gilded agers decided to go instead to Portugal or Monaco or wherever they went. Then the place became more of a haunt for coachloads of pensioners staying in nearby Ilfracombe. Now, the pub is trying to move "up market" and pull in locals as well as tourists, to avoid becoming an evil theme pub. The inn does everything a "destination pub" does: offers you hot or cold milk or cream with your coffee, rooms, chefs rather than microwaves and spotty teenagers. I was expecting the pub to be posh, but it wasn't; it was pleasingly ordinary. It felt like a proper local pub, which is an achievement, because not many people live in the valley. Maybe they camp in the woods, guerrilla-local style.

Camra was right about the beer: four Exmoor Ales on offer and my pint was too good to drink slowly. Weirdly, I was the only person drinking beer; everyone else (about four or five groups) were drinking tea or coffee. There is something exciting about pubs in odd locations. There is something odd about pubs in exciting locations.

I hadn't been there long and the peacock wanted to get near me again, perhaps as much as I wanted to drink another pint of Exmoor Ale in that beer garden, but the sky had gone old and the trees were closing in.

HUNTERS INN, HEDDON VALLEY

ADAM'S ALE RATING: 4 OUT OF 5

DRINK THIS: EXMOOR ALE, 3.8%

Hunters Inn website

Exmoor Ales

National Trust information about West Exmoor

North Devon Camra pub of the year revealed

2009-04-09T04:54:00.000-07:00

A THRIVING North Devon pub in a breathtaking rural idyll — which takes pains to welcome locals as well as holidaymakers — has been named “pub of the year” by real ale campaigners.

The Hunters Inn, which nestles in the Heddon Valley between Exmoor and the Bristol Channel, is this year’s Camra (Campaign For Real Ale) North Devon pub of the year.

Camra spokesman Chris Franks said the pub had won the award because it served consistently good quality ales, with sympathy for local breweries, in a friendly atmosphere. The pub’s staff was also praised for being knowledgeable and providing good service.

When David Orton and his wife, Deborah, bought the Hunters Inn three years ago they were well aware the pub had been a haunt of the wealthy and well-known — as well as more ordinary local folk — for decades. In the 1970s and 1980s, however, as the glamorous people increasingly went abroad for holidays, the inn became less glamorous and relied heavily on coach loads of pensioners staying in nearby Ilfracombe.

David, 38, took on the business while living in the local valley in semi-retirement after a successful career selling televisions and music equipment. The Ortons, who were keen to re-stamp a mark of quality on the inn, have since transformed the pub into a proper local, with numerous music and pub game nights, as well as quality food and accommodation.

The inn has become, to David’s delight, a successful “destination pub” and is likely to cement its success in future years as more people, perhaps conscious of climate-damaging air travel, choose North Devon over more expensive foreign holidays. “The original inn was an old tenant farm,” he told the Journal. “And the farm used to sell ales to the local farmers. It became famous with poets and artists because it is such a beautiful spot. In 1895 the inn burned down and the current building was built on the same site.

“The guestbooks are phenomenal; Thomas Hardy wrote about the pub, members of the royal family have stayed here, as well as people like Ringo Starr and Vaughn Williams. In its 1960s heyday, it was very famous.”

The earlier guestbooks have gone to Lynton museum but their spirit lives on. “Last year we repainted the building in its original Edwardian colour scheme and we have been upgrading the accommodation,” he said.

“Real ale is a passion of mine. When we came here there were just two real ales; we now have eight at any one time. We try to support West Country brewers, including Exmoor Ales.”

The pub even hosts its own beer festival in the second week of September. Families In addition to the history, bucolic setting and real local ales, the pub also boasts a welcoming attitude to families and children and no fewer than three chefs producing anything from chips for hungry walkers to top-class dinner for honeymooners.

While some pubs in North Devon are closing their doors or suffering declining takings, the Hunters Inn’s profits are increasing, perhaps proving claims by Camra that pubs that give the public what they want can still prosper in a recession.

David said: “We have trebled the turnover in three years and that is from the support of local trade. “Everybody who had the inn for the past 30 years concentrated on visitors and you can end up with a theme pub. What makes it fun is local trade and locals will only come if the food and beer is really good and that makes it a good pub.

“We have pool, darts and poker, a jazz band called the Heddon Valley Stumblers, a folk night, a pudding club.” And with all the excellent ale, music, games — and scenery — you might think the Hunters Inn could not sound any more perfect.

Well it can: the pub is open 365 days a year and if you do make the effort to visit — by car, bicycle or foot — you are promised a friendly welcome from a committed landlord who is unlikely to boot you out into the rain when the clock hits 11pm.

From the North Devon Journal.

Blaze at historic pub

2009-03-26T07:34:00.000-07:00

By Kathryn Smith, North Devon Journal

A MAJOR fire at the historic Hoops Inn at Horns Cross has destroyed part of the 13th century pub.

But owners Dee and Gerry Goodwin say they plan to re-open for business on Monday.

There were 101 firefighters from across three counties fighting the blaze on Monday night.

Chimney sparks had been spotted by a passer by and combined with the high winds, set the thatch alight.

Dee said: “We are absolutely devastated. This is not just our business, it is our home. It may take a while, but we plan for it to be even better.” Gerry added: “Words cannot describe it.”

A handful of guests and staff were evacuated when the fire started around 5pm on Monday. No one was hurt and Gerry said the fire drill worked perfectly. He added: “Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service did a wonderful, awe inspiring, mind blowing job. I have never seen anything like it. They were so professional, and so organised.

“We had spent a lot of the winter refurbishing and spent a lot of money on the pub, particularly in the room that was destroyed. But our basic plan is to open the restaurant and bars and 80% of the bedrooms on Monday.”

Between 40 to 50 bookings had to be cancelled on Tuesday morning, and guests due to stay Monday night had been transferred elsewhere. Gerry said: “We have had amazing support from the guests, staff and neighbours.”

The couple have owned the Hoops Inn, which is listed in the 2009 Michelin Guide to Eating Out in Pubs, for the past five years.

Fourteen fire engines from Devon, Somerset and Cornwall were at the scene, including foam units from Exmouth and Porlock which use a specialist technique to fight thatch fires. It was exactly three months ago that many of those crews were fighting to save the thatched George Hotel in Hatherleigh which was destroyed in a blaze two days before Christmas.

Bideford group commander Pete Newman was leading the Hoops Inn operation. He said: “When we arrived there was a well-developed fire in the thatched roof about a quarter of the way down the roof. We created a fire break halfway down and worked back towards the burning thatch to prevent it spreading. There were also crews inside and we managed to limit the fire damage to 25% of the roof.

“We also managed to move most of the contents out of the rooms to prevent further damage and some valuable furniture was saved.

“About 50% of the main thatched area was untouched, as was most of the pub downstairs. “We were cutting through the thatch, pulling it down and dropping it on the main road or to the back of the building which is quite labour intensive work.”

Mr Newman added: “I was very pleased with the way the operation went. The crews worked very well together and there was good liaison with other services. The initial actions of the fire break saved the rest of the building and thatch.”

While crews battled the Hoops Inn blaze, another 15 pumps were sent to a fire at the former Ambrosia factory in Lapford. Although resources in the area were said to be very stretched, it did not impact on the Hoops Inn operation.

The vexed question of ear-splitting pop music in 1970s-style back street boozers once again demands debate

2009-03-16T10:31:00.000-07:00

We had a drink first, my good friend J and I, in The Fountain, a refurbished foodie bar in Trinity Street in the centre of Barnstaple.

We've both got a baby son a piece so we're always at the brittle-sighed point of terrible nervous exhaustion whenever we meet for a pint.

You could store bar snacks, cashew nuts perhaps, in the deep folds under our child-ruined eyeballs. You could hang us upside down by our ankles from a tower block, firing bales of flaming straw at us from medieval catapults, and we would take the opportunity to sleep in our stirrups, not soil in our cords, like cowards.

In fact, we're a bit like swimmers, as, I think, a lot of good-hearted pub fanatics are; like North Devon sea-plungers, we need to ease in to the passtime, to let the sheer saltwater move over our heads and wash away the work, the crying, the dancing chariots of gloom, the ever-howling mangy dogs of death, who stalk our every breath...

But so much for the chuckles; we need to let the soothing wooden cradle of the English pub bring us back to the earth frame of our characters - with love, with beauty, with beer. Shame then that the Fountain felt a bit like a three-star hotel lobby.

Yes, the Guinness (which is £3 a pint in most places now, gods help us all), was good enough. Yes, everything was in order. But it was a bar, not a pub, so I shall reserve further comment for our next engagement, which was at the Corner House, a well-known back street boozer in the centre of Barnstaple. The Corner House has pub DNA running through its wood and bricks and glass in genial torrents; it surely grows its customers like a tree makes its limbs.

It was mid-evening on a Saturday and the place was busily turning, but not overcrowded, with people who knew each other, a sure sign of a proper locals alehouse. As we rested our pints of Tribute (good pint, Tribute, and first brewed to celebrate the 1999 solar eclipse) on a lacquered table from the 1970s, I was transported to a semi-mythical era which ended just before I was born. Could I see men with long hair and flared trousers, smoke-billowing faces, chatting up "dolly birds" by the bar? Was that Rod Stewart on the "jukebox"? Were they strike placards by the door?

No. But I could not escape a, possibly delusional on my part, pleasantly anti-fashion Ted Heath-era vibe at the Corner House. Even one of the bar pumps was surely a little plastic block of nostalgia, not a bit of equipment. Full marks to them too for keeping the grand old ceramic urinals in the gents (a sign the pub's history goes beyond the 1970s). You know they don't make wee-holes like that any more, more's the pity. Ahhh, I thought as I relieved myself in the ample porcelain theatre. Ahhh, the nostalgic thought of trips to the outside bogs at the Bridge Inn in Topsham, with the cool night air birds made strange by a bellyful of Devon ale.

The only downer was the absurdly ear-shattering volume of the pop music (Britney Spears anyone?). Pubs are for conversations or solitary contemplation. Extremely loud recorded music is for discotheques, and discotheques are for dancing.

They still have discotheques, right?

The Corner House, Boutport Street, Barnstaple

ADAM'S ALE RATING: 3 out of 5

DRINK THIS: Tribute (4.2%)

My incantation did not work, and I think I know why.

2009-03-04T06:34:00.000-08:00

In September 2008, seven months ago, I blogged a rather tongue-in-cheek "incantation", urging you all to go to the North Country Inn, in Barnstaple town centre. It is probably the town's oldest pub and has (still) not been ruined, as far as I can tell, by redevelopment or fashionable decoration. I really wanted this pub to succeed, to become a much-needed beer-drinking gem; the building and interior are superb, and it has a reasonable location.

I really wanted - want - that pub to succeed, because I can see the potential, but my plea was, in hindsight, somewhat misguided and too optimistic. The North Country Inn, which is owned by Enterprise Inns, one of the giant pubcos who are getting a lot of abuse from MPs, landlords and drinkers, has closed and is up for sale. I don't know who is to blame for the pub closing, but I know why I didn't go there after my last visit.

The second-to-last time I visited the North Country, and I was not a regular, I enjoyed some simple but enjoyable pub grub and a decent pint. The place seemed friendly, if a little bare and devoid of Proper Local atmosphere, but it had, as I say, potential, not least because of its fabulous wooden windowframes. Well that was then.

The last time I visited, what I took to be the manic desperation of a pub fighting the wrong battle for survival was in evidence: the tacky corporate-style posters in display cases on the wall outside the front door, advertising wares as if the pub was a branch of McDonald's not one of North Devon's most historic inns, and the skull-splittingly loud pop music both indicated to me that this place had missed a trick and was doomed. At the bar, things were worse.

A handful of drinkers, most of whom had yet to see their 21st birthday, I guessed, stood with the unrelaxed demeanour of teenagers everywhere, occasionally shouting chunks of "conversation" above the tinny house music; I actually felt a bit sorry for them; it was hardly a carefree vibe. The barmaid was very friendly, but told me there was no real beer, only lager and Guinness. I ordered a pint of the latter, and the poor girl had no idea how to pour it.

I took my badly-poured pint to the unsurprisingly-empty front section of the pub, and hunkered down beneath the occasional teenage shouts and techno. I went in to a damage-limitation reverie and thought of a bustling, but unmaniac, town centre local, with a row of glorious well-kept local ales on offer, a careful and knowledgeable landlord or landlady busy behind the bar, groups of friends enjoying animated conversations at tables, maybe an old man reading the cricket scores at the bar, a game of darts in one corner, a round of cards in another corner, and all among us the unspoken sense that character and community are better friends than corporations and spreadsheets, and the enlivening feeling of useful escape from work and duty.

I drank my pint as quickly as I could and escaped in to the dank night, keeping my remaining beer cash for another day.

I am a passionate pub lover and I say this with no satisfaction: the deadwood in our pub trade is being felled.

In a fug of bleach, I am accosted by a man displaying symptoms of lunacy

2009-01-25T07:40:00.000-08:00

A shiny beetle-black glass of glorious Guinness is often a failsafe option for the real beer fanatic who has been obliged by circumstance to visit a pub where the landlord or landlady thinks ale is a type of hard rain.

If the gods are smiling, and how could we prove they were or were not?, you will see a bottle of Ireland's finest stout on a dusty wooden shelf behind the bar, possibly next to some neon-coloured drinks in a fridge and some pork scratchings in a cardboard box. But these days the bottle option is less common, so there is draft Guinness.

At its best, draft Guinness is a welcome old pal of a drink but it is not as easy or cheap to keep and serve as keg lager, which might, or might not, account for the average-tasting pint I had in Sherry's Tavern in Barnstaple. But maybe I'm being unfair; maybe my senses were out-of-whack.

People who did not want smoking banned in our pubs sometimes complain about the smell of alehouses, now the scent-cloak of burning, and burned, tobacco is forbidden.

I am in favour of the smoking ban, on health grounds, but as soon as we walked in and my ears adjusted to the karaoke, my nose and lungs and belly had to cope with a tang which I imagine a perfumier might describe as having a top note of bleach, with an undertone of lager, and a wisp of, er, something sold in a bottle labelled "perfume". Huddled beneath the din, like a man lost in a bunker somewhere in nomansland, my friend provided a less kind assessment of the vibes. For the first time in my life, apart perhaps from the times I visited those plastic toilets at the Glastonbury music festival where the previous visitors had left too much evidence of their visit (and how little would have been too much, I hear you say), I longed for a huddle of incessant cigar smokers to appear and start blowing Cuban fumes up my nose.

No real ale was on offer that night, so to the Guinness we went by default. I have drank draft Guinness in many pubs around England and Ireland, and even further afield. Indeed, for some time in my early 20s I acquired a taste for stout and I regularly drank nothing else and, over-doing it, became slightly fat. You know good Guinness when you get it: it's bitter, creamy, long-lasting on the tongue and thick with pungent flavour. Maybe my tastebuds had been affected by the jagged smell of disinfectant, but the pint I had, and admittedly it was only one pint, seemed insipid.

As I took my first sips, a rather excited man with slightly unmatched eyeballs appeared at my face and asked me which road I lived in.

I politely lied to him, and he said with a look of barely controlled glee: "You're lying".

Luckily I was called away to the karaoke area at the back of the pub, which is decorated with framed photographs of pop stars such as Oasis. I'd happily say if the customers looked like they were enjoying themselves (which they do in a pub I have already admitted I don't much rate on the atmosphere front: Wetherspoon's) but there was an air of desperation in the corners. Pubs have always had their natural share of melancholy, I suppose.

While my nose and mouth learned to adjust to Sherry's, and what it offered a pub loving man, my ears and brain were assaulted by the sound of the karaoke. Again, just as Guinness is a good beer if properly kept and served in the right environment, so singing in pubs is, at the right time and with the right tune and atmosphere, a good hear. But a metaphorical photocopy of a bad Robbie Williams song, sung with as much soul as a plastic bag, is my idea of pub misery. Then our lot started singing and things really deteriorated; I felt sorry for the regulars.

Sherry's Tavern, Boutport Street, Barnstaple

Adam's Ale Rating: One out of Five

Drink This: Whisky?

A potent mix for the future?

2009-01-11T13:07:00.000-08:00

The financial pages of the national press this weekend have contained interesting news for the pub fanatic. Punch Taverns and Enterprise Inns, two of the major pub companies, who have numerous pubs in North Devon, have seen their shares in freefall. Their landlords will tell you, usually in private, that this is no surprise at all; the tied house system obliges landlords to pay over the odds for their beer, making it even harder for them to compete, particularly in a recession.

In addition, if landlords had greater control over their buying and selling, I think our pubs would improve overnight; the bland corporatisation of our pubs is disheartening, at the least, anyway and perhaps the potent mix of a sinking economy and the struggling pubco sector could lead to a welcome resurgence of the free house. Imagine! Goodbye uniform decor, ale, music, prices, service. Hello character, fun, community, history, and...profits for our local pubs. But I remain pessimistic, at least in the short term.

Wetherspoon's has launched what seems to be a price-cutting war, with 99p pints, which few free houses could ever compete with. I have said before, JDW sells outstanding beer, but its pubs have zero attraction otherwise; they, and their ilk, seem to be pure function, zero poetry. That is not surprising, because they are often micro-managed, to all intents and purposes, by suits clutching armfuls of spreadsheets and PR garbage.

I only wish the dead hand of the suits had not rested so heavily on our beloved pub trade; the wizards in charge of these pub property dynasties rake in millions, while our landlords often earn less than the minimum wage. And we are left with pubs that are more like an outlet of McDonalds than the Rose and Crown. "Theme bars" have only one theme: frail crapness runs through them like letters in Blackpool rock (which has lots of theme bars).

There also seems little we pub-goers can do to pioneer a revolution in pub ownership, other than supporting our free houses by going to them and perhaps lobbying for a law to oblige pub companies to give landlords the option of buying their own beer direct from brewers.

I wouldn't be surprised if the pub firms started trying to cut their losses; the long-promised decimation of the pub trade might be about to happen quicker than we thought.

What will happen then could herald a brilliant future for pub lovers and landlords.

In the meantime, we need to keep it local and support our pubs as best we can, particularly the good ones.

The George Hotel

2008-12-29T11:50:00.000-08:00

The George Hotel in Hatherleigh has been almost totally destroyed by fire. The loss of this glorious centuries-old pub is, in pub terms, a tragedy. All that history up in smoke; it can never be restored. But the George can be rebuilt, just as the good old Chichester Arms in Bishops Tawton rose from the ashes after a devastating fire three years ago. Careful and intelligent design and good North Devon craftsmanship should see the Hatherleigh landmark back in action, hopefully quicker than we might imagine while looking now at the North Devon Journal's brutal footage of the inferno.

Is Darling the Beeching of pubs?

2008-12-23T07:31:00.000-08:00

By Adam Wilshaw

A NORTH DEVON pub trade spokesman has accused chancellor Alistair Darling of being the “Dr Beeching of pubs”.

The comparison is to the widescale railway cuts of the 1960s, administered by Dr Richard Beeching, which led to numerous smaller branch lines being closed.

Barry Lewis, chairman of the Barnstaple and North Devon Licensed Victuallars Association, said: “Supermarkets and Beer Duty are killing us. Mr Darling is the Dr Beeching of pubs. There are 589 licensed pubs in North Devon and they police their own establishments, supermarkets do not. Once the alcohol has left the premises they wash their hands of it, yet we seem to be held responsible.”

Mr Darling has been widely disliked by the pub trade for some time, and there was even a campaign to bar him from every pub in the country.

North Devon MP Nick Harvey said: “I appreciate that with off-sales there are no real control measures at the point of consumption. I have had meetings with the licensing minister and the treasury to argue that the latest rise in beer duty is too much of blunt instrument to tackle this problem. There needs to be minimum pricing for supermarkets and I am now pressing for this.”

The Journal published a special report in October examining the current fate of our local pubs. According to the many pub landlords we spoke to, talk of the end of the pub seemed premature, although it was clear the trade was perhaps facing the toughest conditions for a generation.

But active North Devon Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) member Terry Burrows said local pubs which sell quality ale and decent food in a friendly environment will thrive despite the recession. He said some pubs in the area were closing or bereft of custom, but the pubs he cherished most were popular and relatively profitable.

From the North Devon Journal.

North Devon Camra

"You Can Take A Lady There"...

2008-12-16T11:45:00.000-08:00

A proofreader I know, who is of distinguished vintage, once said that Marshall's pub in Boutport Street in Barnstaple was the only place a gentleman could take a lady (for a drink) in the town.

Now, taking nothing away from his town centre local, which has been praised by Camra for the quality of its beer, I think that place has a rival as a venue where you can take a lady, or even a potential lady. Lilico's.

I shouldn't be writing about Lilico's here, because it's not a pub. It's a tapas bar. But it is a local independent tapas bar which sells a decent pint of real ale: namely, Cornwall's finest, Tribute. Some bars don't sell real ale, so JOLLY WELL DONE and TOOT TOOT LILICO'S!

Lilico's, The Square, Barnstaple

Adam's Ale Rating: 3 out of 5

Drink this: Tribute

Village pub landlord calls time for good

2008-11-20T07:26:00.000-08:00

From the North Devon Journal:

By Adam Wilshaw

A VILLAGE pub landlord says he is declaring himself bankrupt and quitting the trade after a sudden downturn in profits, adding to fears that North Devon’s public houses are facing decimation.

Patrick Oakey has closed the Fox and Hounds pub in Fremington, where he has been the landlord since 2004, and is moving out of the pub, which is also his home, with his wife and two teenage sons.

Mr Oakey said large numbers of people, particularly younger customers, were being lured away from pubs, such as the Fox and Hounds, by cheap supermarket alcohol. He also said the smoking ban had hit his takings and because of the credit crunch he was unable to secure credit to see him through a bad patch.

Campaigners and senior politicians, including North Devon MP Nick Harvey and Torridge and West Devon MP Geoffrey Cox, not to mention Prince Charles, have warned that thousands of traditional English pubs are in jeopardy, partly because of the economic recession, but also because of the way large pub companies, who own the majority of pubs, often oblige their tenants to buy beer through them at prices higher than cost (known as a tie).

Mr Oakey said: “My client base has always been youngsters and when they walk in the supermarkets and see cheap alcohol they are not going to come in and pay £3 a pint.

“It’s part of village life and it is sad it has closed. Enterprise (the firm which owns the Fox and Hounds) will get someone else in.”

He added: “I will miss it. I have spent four years building the place up. I wouldn’t have another pub.” He also thanked all his loyal customers.

The Fox and Hounds lease is on the market for £97,500. According to Cowling, which is the agent dealing with the sale of the lease, the pub has a turnover of £175,000 with a rent of £23,000 a year.

The Campaign for Real Ale (Camra) has warned that almost 60 UK pubs are closing every month. In the Barnstaple area alone pubs currently on the market include the Wrey Arms in Sticklepath, the Tavern in the town centre, and Funky Munky on the Strand.

The pattern is the same across North Devon and Torridge. A recent Journal investigation found that many pubs in North Devon were struggling to make profits, although local Camra members said good quality pubs which served well-kept beer and good food in attractive environments were still doing well.

Landlords blamed cheap supermarket alcohol and the recession for the decline in takings in recent months. But some pubs are bucking the trend and reporting healthy custom.

I find myself wrestling with the age old battle of love and hate, and contradictory passions in one pub

2008-11-19T09:48:00.000-08:00

An ill wind was wailing through the world economy, through all our bones and the future bones of all our future generations for ever, as we made our way through half-deserted streets to one of the most popular pubs in North Devon and Torridge.

I was feeling a bit depressed about the future for our pubs because I had recently met a North Devon pub landlord who was about to declare himself bankrupt and close his business. He said he was being squeezed from all sides; by the pub company, the smoking ban, and by cheap supermarket booze of all types and horrors. But despite all that he could have made a go of it, maybe, if only he had had more of one vital business ingredient: customers.

Sometimes it is good to acknowledge the blindingly bloody obvious. Pubs are closing because customers are not using them, and other pubs are still busy and profitable, because customers are still using them. So how about a case study? One of the most popular pubs in North Devon is the Wetherspoon's outlet The Panniers, in Barnstaple. It will never close. It will survive the recession. It would survive a nuclear war. And on a dank Thursday evening this month, the place was so ramjam pack-a-doodled that when I arrived with my friend we took the only two remaining chairs.

I was still chewing over all the stinking doom in the news. Pub doom. My own eyes weren't helping. Walking to the Panniers through the glistering Barnstaple town centre streets, all but deserted, we passed empty pub after empty pub.

But not the Panniers. There can only be two reasons why the Panniers is such a success; good beer and cheap prices. Because the place has atmosphere the way big brand keg lagers have taste, the way Gordon Brown has a radiant smile, the way David Cameron has sincerity, the way house prices are clever, the way plastic window frames are acceptable in a public house context (no PVC frames at the Panniers by the way, fellow window freaks).

In fact, if you have ever been in a Wetherspoon's pub anywhere in the queendom you will know what the Panniers is like. They are all the same.

Same hotel lobby decor, same food, same prices. The only thing to tell you you are not in Nottingham or Norwich is the local accents of the many punters.

The beer was superb, as good as a good rub down in an ice house by a crackling wood blaze while the huskies keep guard against the glacier pirates. I had a crisply glorious pint of Smoky Joe. My friend had a soothing draft of something dark and powerful. He was satisfied with it and it made him philosophical. As we sat and talked - mostly about babies - I noticed we were surrounded by adults of all ages, most of whom were eating curry from metal pots. If I had been tiresome enough to ask them how often they came here, they might have said: "every week".

If you are interested in good, low priced ale, the Panniers is a perfect hostelry. Cheap grub too. Probably tastes quite nice. And, you know, I hate the place.

I hate it because it is the bland pub universe cousin of a corporate fast food chain outlet. The place has a sort of psychic anti-character impact on the space it contains, with its school dining hall ambiance. There is no sense of community. Good pubs make you feel like you could own them, in some vicarious customer way, if you were a regular.

In terms of character alone, look at a pub I have wrote about before on this blog: The Reform Inn, in Pilton. It doesn't sell cheap curry and it does not welcome children or have a wide variety of the finest beers known to man and beast. But in all its eccentric, even ugly, brilliance, the local boozer offers a rare sanctuary from the blanding-out influence of the boardroom folk. What choice we have left is debatable. But there are still good local pubs who deserve our custom, even if it's just £3 a week.

We drinkers vote with our pint pots and our wine glasses, and the Panniers was as full as can be on Thursday last week. The beancounters will tell you this success was proof of armour against the ill wind blowing through the economy.

I kept thinking of my ideal pub.

ALEFLASH - The Hoppiest Beer In The Known Universe

2008-11-06T11:16:00.000-08:00

ALEFLASH!

If you want to get your head around possibly the hoppiest beer in the known universe, get down to the Red Barn in Woolacombe for a pint of Proper Job. It is a fine beer, kept in peak condition. Proper Job. Red Barn. You must try it. ALEFLASH ENDS.

Beer Vs Beer

2008-11-04T13:23:00.000-08:00

A strangely serious post this week...

George Orwell wrote an essay in 1946 about the cost of buying books, which he compared to the cost of buying cigarettes. He wanted to look at the assumption that buying books was "too expensive" for most people, so he made a rough calculation of how much he had spent on reading material. The sum seemed like a lot, but it was much less than what he was spending on tobacco. Orwell was a relatively frugal man but he did smoke a lot, in common with most of his contemporaries.

In the essay he went on to question the relationship between the financial cost of his books and their actual value to him. His essay concluded: "And if our book consumption remains as low as it has been, at least let us admit that it is because reading is a less exciting pastime than going to the dogs, the pictures or the pub, and not because books, whether bought or borrowed, are too expensive."

I think this sort of thinking could apply to how we view our pubs, which must be treasured as community enginerooms as well as unique pieces of an historical jigsaw.

In these times of rising unemployment, plunging pension pots and depressed wages, it might seem crazy to encourage people to buy beer and food in our pubs. But surely a small amount of our spending is about choice and is about the total enjoyment of our lives. What is exciting about beer and pubs should be more important than the mere ingestion of ethanol alcohol.

Whenever I am in a supermarket I see queues of people with trolleys stacked with junk food and cheap alcohol among the necessities. That's their choice and I'm no health freak. My argument is that the value of cheap alcohol in supermarkets is much less than the value of a pint in a good local pub in North Devon and Torridge. Try this rhetorical calculation and think about the choice:

You earn the minimum wage or not much more and after paying the bills and everything else unavoidable as well as charitable giving, you are left with £3 one Friday night to spend on the treat that might greatly increase your happiness in the drizzly depth of December. That £3 could buy enough alcohol from a supermarket to make you drunk. You could get some powerful booze, go home, watch the TV and sink in to a private oblivion. Or you could have a friendly pint of beer in your local pub, where you will meet people, and hopefully find humour or gossip. When I was a hospital porter earning £10,000 a year and paying my own way, I always had a couple of quid to go to my local for a pint.

And just as a book might add more joy and music to your life than a packet of cigarettes, and with value impossible to calculate in terms of money, so too a trip to the pub will improve your life more than a turn down the aisles in the superstore. How can it not?

An MP's view of the pub trade...

2008-10-30T07:12:00.000-07:00

North Devon MP Nick Harvey (who is my MP), is deputy chairman of the all-party parliamentary beer group. He told the North Devon Journal: “I am acutely aware that these are difficult times for the beer and pub trade. Most recently I and my colleagues have been lobbying the Government, with Early Day Motion 2159, protesting at the detrimental effect of supermarket alcohol prices.

“Pubs are closing at an alarming rate of five a day, compared with three a day last year, four a week the year before and two a week the year before that.

"Barnstaple is no exception to this trend with the recent closure of several longstanding establishments in Boutport Street and elsewhere.

“Tax hikes combined with the ban on smoking in public places and supermarkets selling beer as a significant lost leader, to the extent that it is cheaper than bottled water, have all had a negative impact on a struggling industry.

“While pubs have served a historic role, off-trade has always existed alongside, providing consumer freedom of choice. However, economically off-trade, thanks to the supermarkets, is now clearly a serious challenge with an annual turn over of about £13bn almost matching pub sales.

“I and the APBG will keep pressing the Treasury, Department of Communities and Local Government and Health regarding alcohol duty being a blunt instrument to deal with binge-drinking (the real target being supermarkets selling alcohol below cost price), the positive value of pubs to our communities and the need for regulation and licensing not to be so burdensome as to push yet more pubs out of business.”

There are 57,000 pubs and bars in the UK, contributing £18 billion to the economy and employing 650,000 people. The Business and Enterprise Committee is currently holding a new enquiry into the role of pub companies (the last was conducted in 2004), with submissions closing at the end of September.

According to Mr Harvey, the pub companies have failed to adopt previous recommendations that rents should be sustainable, tied tenants should not be worse off and that the upward-only rent reviews and gaming machine tie must cease.

The British Beer and Pub Association reported this week that beer sales between July and September fell by 7.2% compared to the same period in 2007.

Beer sales in pubs dropped 8.1% and sales in supermarkets fell 6%. BBPA chief executive Rob Hayward said: “Sinking beer sales and the record five pubs a day closing is a barometer of the UK economic climate. But any prudent diagnosis would also identify the specific impact of the budget’s 9% beer tax increase.”

This story appeared at the same time:

By Adam Wilshaw

GOOD local pubs which sell quality ale and decent food in a friendly environment will thrive despite the recession, according to a North Devon campaigner.

North Devon Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) member Terry Burrows said some pubs in the area were closing or bereft of custom, but the pubs he cherished most were popular and relatively profitable.

There are fears the traditional English local pub is facing an uncertain future, because of cultural and economic changes. Mr Burrows was one of a number of pub-goers, landlords, and brewery firms the Journal spoke to this week about the health of the pub trade in North Devon and Torridge.

Recent warnings about any widespread demise of our local pubs seem premature, given the responses we received. It can also be difficult to establish precisely why a pub closed: Was it because the rent was too high? Too few drinkers? Beer too expensive? No food? Too much food? No “smoking garden”?

Drinkers lured away by cheap supermarket beer? But there is little doubt our boozers are facing a number of problems, and the industry is having to work hard to entice in customers. North Devon MP Nick Harvey (Lib Dem) and Torridge MP Geoffrey Cox (Conservative) have both attacked the Government for increasing beer duty, for example.

Mr Burrows said: “From our experience, the good pubs, that offer what the community wants and are involved in the community, are thriving. It’s not all doom and gloom.” He said ever-increasing beer tax and cheap alcohol in supermarkets were harming our pubs. In addition, pubs which could not offer a smoking area were struggling to keep customers.

On the other hand, sales of cask ale continue to increase year-on-year. Pub landlords and landladies reported a mixed picture.

Jeff Sweet, from the Tavern in Diamond Street, Barnstaple, said his business was still busy at weekends with loyal regulars. And the landlord of a larger Barnstaple pub, who did not want to be named, said pubs had to increasingly offer “added extras”, such as live music, or they would go under. He too said many drinkers seemed to be switching to spirits which are, by alcohol volume, cheaper than ale.

Chris Franks, who sells beer wholesale from 37 independent breweries to pubs around North Devon and beyond, said: “Nothing has changed an awful lot, the ones who put effort in are doing all right, but no one is making a lot of money.” He also pointed out that North Devon and Torridge have a number of excellent breweries, including Country Life in Abbotsham and Barum in Barnstaple.

But Debbie Furnifer, landlady of popular local hostelry Marshalls, in Boutport Street, Barnstaple, said the pub had been quieter than usual in recent months. “I think people are scared to spend their money,” she said. “The regulars are still coming in.”

Few pubs are freehold businesses; the majority are owned by larger firms who lease the premises. Punch Taverns, which has a number of pubs in the area, said it was “passionate about safeguarding the future of the great British pub”. A spokesman told the Journal: “Pubs across the country face a challenging trading environment but we continue to work closely with our licensees in North Devon and across the country to help them find new ways of improving their business, developing their retail proposition and financial stability. This ranges from identifying new or improved food offers to developing other areas of their products, offers or service. Punch also has an industry leading support and training programme for licensees.

“Within our leased estate we have some great examples of pubs that have introduced new facilities, such as Post Office counters, which help them to become focal points of the communities they serve. The North Devonshire area has a small conurbation with limited road access and seasonal trade.

"The pubs have to continually strive to be the best they can be to attract customers and keep them coming back. Offering value for money and having an offer that suits the needs of the local market place is key to success. We have some fantastic outlets in the area which are really bucking the economic trend. The London Inn, Braunton, and the Rock Inn, Georgeham, both have great licensees at the helm who have developed an offer that is just right for their local market place. They consistently deliver excellent levels of customer service and are highly successful as a result.”

But some of the people pulling the pints were less optimistic.

Lee Sycamore, landlord of the Old Market Inn in Holsworthy, said: “With high street spending at its lowest for years, pubs closing down at a rate of five a day, and beer sales for the period of July to September down by 7%, a very grey picture has been drawn over the licensed trade. “The credit crunch has seemed to have hit us all. Speaking for ourselves, as a freehold pub, the trend on most sales seem to be up on last year so far. Beer and food sales have increased significantly, however wines and spirits have fallen dramatically.

"I can only put this down to customers being less extravagant at the end of the evening by cutting out on that last night cap, and saving a small amount by not having a bottle of wine with their meal, just one glass instead.”

But he said next year “could be worse than ever”.

He added: “Calls have gone out to the Government not to put the normal taxation on beers, wines and spirits next year in their budget. A public house is a vital hub for communities through both good and bad times.”

Arthur Scrine, landlord of the Patch and Parrot in Cooper Street, Bideford, said: “We have the same old crowd in here. We’ve got all the golden oldies and the credit crunch has not affected them coming in. The price of beer may have gone up, but we are still the cheapest pub in Bideford.”

Mark Birch has been the landlord of the Black Venus Inn, in Challacombe, on Exmoor, for the past four years and believes the current economic downturn had not had much effect on trade, although he had a stark warning.

He said: “It’s about a level par to last year although there are definitely not as many tourists around. People still have the same money to spend but they are just being a bit more careful with it.

"I don’t think the increase in beer duty will affect us at the moment but, if the Government insists on maintaining the current 4% levy, I think it will kill off the industry.”

Jon Hutchings, from the White Hart hotel in Holsworthy, said: “Generally the pub trade is down however I feel its all about innovation. What with the smoking ban last year and with cut price alcohol sales in supermarkets we are in a difficult time. “Late night weekend trade is down however it is also picking up again but this is due to new ideas and promoting events at weekends such as live music and DJs.

“We are at a time where you cannot expect business to just walk in the door. You have to go that little bit further to entice the customers in. Our food trade is on the up with particular attention focusing on local produce.”

YIKEAROONIES!

2008-10-21T04:18:00.000-07:00

Yikearoonies!

Have you ever seen a big woman fall

off a bar stool?

Watching The Heavens Unfold In The Pub Section As The Future Looks On

2008-10-19T07:28:00.000-07:00

Sometimes a pub visit creates a venn diagram of glee, sensation, and nostalgia.

The circle of glee in the diagram comes from your companions and the beer while the circle of sensations are the slow warmth of the alcohol in your blood and the brace of farmfield air when you step outside.

The final circle, of nostalgia, is the thought of the merry drinkers who are now gone, who argued at your ear or at ears like yours, and the afternoons and evenings you have spent ignoring the stale inhuman defeats of money, mortgages and DIY by tilting your hat at the good life.

The glee, sensation and nostalgia circles intersect at The Pub Section. In the Pub Section I found the Chichester Arms in Bishops Tawton, a pub so determined to thrive that it was born again, nine months after a devastating fire in 2005.

I arrived one midweek evening with my wife and baby just as autumn was starting to blow cool through the North Devon countryside. The Chich, as it is popularly known locally to generations of fans, is a dining pub but it has not destroyed its pub DNA in pursuit of the Hungry Belly Pound. It has kept the cosy chaos of all lovely country pubs without being cloyingly twee or phoney.

Indeed, there was some controlled chaos in the kitchen when we arrived; a key player, the chef, I think, was unexpectedly unavailable. But the barman stayed friendly.

I drank two fine pints of Exmoor Ale, as crisp as the dew forming on the hills and I ate a beefburger, regular readers will be astonished to hear. It was superb beef, and was well-cooked, but needed a bit of seasoning.

I took the last few mouthfuls of my final Exmoor Ale outside to look at the stars and the waxing moon, and to inhale some of the frosty nostalgia.

There were few constellations on show, but I saw Cassiopeia and the north star. Cassiopeia was named after the Greek mythological wife of Cepheus, king of Ethiopia, you know; she was sent to the heavens because she bragged about her beauty, hardly a punishment for any crime, including honesty. I managed to find the moon too, without looking at a book. You could spend an hour in a beer garden in the twilight, thinking of venn diagrams, and how many bits of life fit in circles, and go quietly insane.

I had my baby boy in one arm, his eyes like mirrors inside his woolly hood, while his mother finished her dinner in rare peace inside. An almost mythical experience.

My boy was too young for a sip of my beer, although he was "baptised" with ale in his first week of life, and I didn't want to share the magic stuff anyway. But he was not too green, I hoped, to absorb the sense of the dark countryside just out of sight. I was so fixed in the Pub Section, being watched by the future.

THE CHICHESTER ARMS, BISHOPS TAWTON, NORTH DEVON

ADAM'S ALE RATING: 4 OUT OF 5

DRINK THIS: EXMOOR ALE

A perverse turn of events in Cornwall

2008-09-30T04:21:00.000-07:00

You know how it is early in the evening in a trendy Cornish fishing village, streets lined with tempting quality restaurants, when you go with a scratchy-tired baby and arrive at the Shipwright public house instead?

Looking back the choice seems perverse, I don't know, maybe even perverted.

We should have fled when we saw the menu. Menus on laminated place mats are rarely an indication of imaginative, careful, dining on the horizon.

But as my travels so far have revealed, the quality of food on offer in a pub is not necessarily on a par with the quality of the beer, and so it proved at the Shipwright where I drank a pleasant pint of Doom Bar.

Doom Bar is one of the best beer names in the world; it also has unintended resonance in certain situations.

The pub, in St Ives, was selling itself as a place to eat with large signs inviting in the unwary, and the perverse, and it had big plastic menus on the tables, so it is only fair to judge it by its food too.

As I looked at my big plastic menu, I was ignored by all staff, whose only task in relation to food, it seemed, was to put numbers in a till and take your money (you could go and bugger off, for all they cared, was the impression I got), I chewed on this question: why is buying a plate of food such a problem in our pubs?

Surely this is a simple enough transaction: I pay you £8 for a burger and chips and you provide that advertised food, and here's the crucial bit, in a form which is undisgusting. Seems simple to me! In fact, I didn't go to chef university, but I serve tasty, cheap-ish food at home most nights of the week. But the cack I have been presented with pubs in the UK I would not serve to my family. They would think I had gone up the pole.

The reason, I suspect, that pubs, like the Shipwright, serve up such dismal grub is because they are far removed from the basics of kitchen life and the pleasures of cooking. The idea for the plastic menus, for instance, and the boring food, was probably farted out by a frownsome middle manager in an office at 3pm one bleak Wednesday, one dreak March day.

So this is the meat of the matter: my burger was tasteless, gristly, cheap and soggy. The bun that contained the flesh was sodden with the water used to wash the tasteless heap of salad by its side. The handful of chips were lifeless, tasteless, and, in fact, virtually pointless. My wife's 'prawn salad' was in fact five battered prawns and a bit of tasteless lettuce and two tasteless factory tomatoes. It was, all told, a disgraceful way to accompany a good pint of beer in a fairly unspoiled public house by a busy little harbour.

So much for that. It's not the end of the bleeding world, I hear you rumble. Indeed not.

But why go on about it? Why whinge? Well, with good reason, my friends, with good reason. Our pubs face terrible peril. They are going bust. I want the good ones to prosper. Some will prosper by selling good food, and if they can't manage that, and it takes effort and money to serve food well, then sticking to good old crisps, nuts and scratchings.

Maybe a sandwich.

Maybe a pickled egg. On festival days.

Please go to the North Country Inn (an incantation)

2008-09-28T07:15:00.000-07:00

I can't expect you to respond,

But please go to the North Country Inn.

The pub has solid walls and wooden window frames.