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

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...

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Is this the beginning of the end for the pubcos?

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.

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

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

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

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.

Landlords go to parliament for a "fair pint"

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.

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

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.

A potent mix for the future?

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.

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

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.

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

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.”

A perverse turn of events in Cornwall

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.

INTERLUDE: Where armchairs are used as dining chairs, and where no grace or rhythm interrupts the baleful mediocrity

If you are a cross-eyed lightbrain cretin with a gold medal in mediocrity, you will love Mambo in Taunton.

If your head wobbles because your skull is crammed with blancmange rather than human brain, you will love Mambo in Taunton.

If you greedily swallow every line of lies ever dispensed by marketing chimps, you will love Mambo in Taunton.

If you worship at the altar of fashion, you will kneel with love under the bamboo parasols at Mambo in Taunton.

If you have intelligence and judgement the way wolves have mathematics and poetry, you will love Mambo in Taunton.

If you think Jeremy Clarkson improves things in general, you will love Mambo in Taunton.

If you think Foster's is good beer, you will love Mambo in Taunton.

If you are a quiffy great honk-faced mummy's boy with a belligerent manner and a stenchful sense of entitlement, you will love Mambo in Taunton.

If you think Tesco lasagne is better than sex, you will love Mambo in Taunton.

Indeed.

And a final thought:

When the guttersnipe poison pigeons look even more suicidal than usual and the natural exuberance of human optimism flails gnarled and angry and selfish, you know Summer 2008 has fallen like an itchy grey cloak about your ears, and you know you are in a McPub in Taunton.