retiredmartin

Wycombe is a large drab town surrounded by great countryside and a few classic pubs. It also has the hardest football ground to get away from at the end of the match.

Wooburn Green feels like the end of the straggle of habitation drifting east from central Wycombe, after which you enter a great expanse of woodland punctuated by golf courses and Wetherspoon’s famous service station pub.

Any village built around a green can’t be bad, particularly one with two pubs and a Tesco Express around it.

Even the village club looks inviting, one of a number of buildings my florist Dad would admire and stare at for ages. When I did that yesterday that I got such suspicious looks that I quickly headed for the pub.

A few miles west of here you have the Royal Standard, a few miles east the Bounty, two of the most individual pubs in the country. Wooburn Green’s pubs are more modest, but meet the needs of all but the beer ticker.  The Red Lion even has air hockey.

The Queen & Albert is the Guide newbie in South Bucks, though having read Simon’s fun-packed report I felt like I’d been there already. In homage to Simon, I sat down in view of the locals with an OK pint of Rebellion IPA (NBSS 3) and waited for something to happen.

Disappointingly, I didn’t get the Pam Ayres lookalike today, or the trauma of foreign students eating our Yorkshire puddings, but everything else was as described. A functional rather than gorgeous pub, clearly doing decent unobtrusive lunchtime trade to business folk as well as its original purpose.

The landlord was a gem, chatty and efficient, and pre-empting my request for Spain v Czech Republic on the corner TV when faced with the prospect of watching Bargain Quest.

I spent a pleasant 20 minutes waiting for something to report, and finally the dog behind the other stool stirred, it was a gorgeous pooch.

*I don’t think that’s a musical reference, though it reads quite close to a Toyah album.