retiredmartin

A year into our campervan adventures, and we’ve stayed at Newark four nights already. This is partly because the nice people at Brownhills Motorhomes let us stay there free and give us vouchers for free pies and Chuckle Brothers tribute acts, but also because Newark is pretty special.

We visited again last week while clever people with power tools tested our campervan electrics.

Newark is getting better by the year, with more craft and better budget eateries. The Spoons remains a classic boozer though, where professionals drinkers can comfortably reach their second pint of Fosters by 9.30 a.m.

The Sir John Aderne is only an occasional Beer Guide entry, but I recommend the breakfasts. And the beer, but none for me as I’d finished my cohort of CAMRA vouchers and £2 is a psychological price point in Spoons.

I did see one pint pulled before 11am, though. Bishops Finger, no voucher, purchased just after a group of screaming toddlers descended on the pub.

UPDATE – Alan Winfield has kindly provided a list of the “Ten lairiest Wetherspoons” here.  Neither Newark or Maidenhead are on it; make what you will of that.

With poor WiFi in the Spoons, we hovered for an hour in Starbucks (I know, we’re scum), before lunch.  Somehow resisting the pizzas at the Rupert, we made an impulse trip past the knicker market and down Baldergate to Oscar’s Inn, one of the lesser known gems.

I told Mrs RM it was five minutes walk from the market; it took ten.  Draw your own conclusions.

Oscar’s is the sort of unpretentious but smart community local that you get a lot of in Cambridge (Kingston Arms, Geldart, Queen Edith), but much less commonly elsewhere.

A quality ale line up by most folks’ standards,

and a menu with proper home cooked food (fresh spaghetti, Thai salad) under a tenner.

Plenty of folk of all ages popped in for lunch or a pint, sales broadly split 50/50 between cask and cider. It can be done, particularly when service is as cheery and efficient as here.

And perhaps the best pub library outside the Pilot in Mumbles.

A book about cats, Imp Ale, and the Courage history “A draught of contentment” are interesting bedfellows, though of course Mrs RM and I are wedded to our I-Phones.

But all that ephemera is of naught if the beer is rubbish.  And the beer was nectar, the Jaipur a cool, complex joy (NBSS 4.5).  A shame Mrs RM claimed it for herself.