A last post from the South West for a month or so. After this week I’ve nearly finished the many Bristol Guide pubs, so time to concentrate on Cheltenham next.
On our way back from Falmouth, we stopped at Weston-Super-Mare, where I gave my Mum and Dad a brief tutorial on the works of Banksy. They were more impressed by their fish and chips at Winstons, and rightly so. We’d rejected a dozen chippies before we settled on Winstons.
I left Weston for the rather more multicultural landscape of Lawrence Hill, where there were more police sirens than fish and chip shops, artisanal or otherwise.
It’s definitely Bristol though, you don’t find street art like this in Leamington Spa. Every ghetto, every city has it’s craft beer these days though, and Lawrence Hill’s three newish Beer Guide entries follow the Bristol pattern.
Across from the Packhorse, the more subtly decorated Old Stillage felt like a decent Tut’n’Shive (i.e. better than the surviving one in Donny). Pool, Sky BT football, old furniture, the Smiths on the jukebox. Thankfully “Stop me if you’ve heard this one before” at least drowned out the City match I was trying to avoid. A pale-dominated beer range included a very decent Electric Bear (NBSS 3.5).
Weaving my way north I came to another Bristol institution, the live music venue with real ale. The real ales at the Red Lion (prizes if you can work them out from the pic as I’ve forgotten) were OK, but Simon Everitt is possibly the only real ale punk.
Another two minutes to the Plough, where all the youngsters were gathered around an ignored TV, rather than this attractive room set up for loudspeaker fans.
A typical Bristol (or Brighton) interior, but untypical beer range. Beer of the night from an unlikely source; the Rev James (NBSS 3.5) was full-bodied in contrast to the weak and watery pale beers found a little too often these days.
* Took me ages to think of that. Puns even worse from now on.
