Too many good pubs, too few hours...

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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...

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Tributes for North Devon landlord

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

Camra names North Devon pub of year runner-up

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

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