FLOWERS & FEATHER DUSTERS IN FARNHAM

 

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My teenage son decided he’d had enough of me by Monday.

“When you going out ?”   That means “Leave me alone”

“But the “Beast from the east” is coming”

“Wimp”

So off I went towards Aldershot, home of the UK’s most unlikely budget hotel options.

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Normal time, 2hrs 30, yesterday 1hr 55.  Take that, Beast.

As you’ll see at the top, the Running Stream is a homely village pub in the Hampshire/Surrey borders style.

Which as so often means this lot;

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No longer Number 1

Yes, Greene King run some decent community locals down south, as well as their modern dining barns.  It looks promising from the start.

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And there’s a big smile at the bar.  He looks like a man who’s just seen a snowflake (one had landed on my hair outside).

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I’m not that funny mate

Like my last suburban Greene King new GBG entry near Heathrow, the landlady has added a fair bit of charm to a one-room gem, polished to within an inch of its life.

No craft taps behind the bar, unless these are the new Mikkeller bottles;

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Beats bottles of Golden Jubilee ale in cabinet displays

February hasn’t been a prolific month for new pubs, but there’s been plenty of unpretentious beer ranges, as here.

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A world where Old Golden Hen is exotic

The Greene King IPA was on the back bar, and I thought I’d continue in my quest to see if was capable of greatness.

Well knock me down with a feather duster, it got close.  Superbly kept (NBSS 4+), you can see why the GBBF fell for its charms in 2004. And no, it’s not an early April Fools.

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A winner

Professional drinkers at the bar, retired gentlefolk eating steak and kidney pie and lasagne on proper tables, a pub packed on a midweek lunchtime, laughing at the snow.

A proper pub.

 

 

 

Published by retiredmartin

Retired NHS, doing long walks around UK and the world to record the great bits. Focused on Good Beer Guide pubs and live music.

20 thoughts on “FLOWERS & FEATHER DUSTERS IN FARNHAM”

    1. It really can. Cask beer lottery, you rarely can tell. Look back on blog and find loads of great looking pubs where I’m lukewarm (literally) on their beer.

      The ability of CAMRA branches to weed out the gems is what we should treasure.

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  2. That’s one of the downfalls of being a pub ticker. Well a proper one anyhow. You have to go to places that I said I’d never go back to. Living in Guildford for a while (circa 1984) was fine, Aldershot was, well … Mmmm. Best left at that.

    GK doing okay with the right manager and I will cite ‘Woodies’ in Far Headingley and ‘The Templar’ as exemplars.

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      1. The manager at Woodies told me he refuses to have any GK beers other than IPA on (mandatory in all GK houses) and focusses on Locale and quality guests (Thornbridge) – see excellent article on the pub in the latest edition of the outstanding Leeds CAMRA quarterly magazine ‘New Full Measure’.

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      2. Agree. Sure I had Ilkley there when I went, fantastic quality. Oddly, I don’t think the famous Oxford Turf Tavern (GK) had IPA on, unless it was in the back bar.

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      1. Woodies manager has been there 14 years. Templar manager has been there a good while too. To be fair these pubs are incomparable with Wetherspoons. The Templar is a Leeds institution almost. I was in last Saturday to watch the rugby, a multitude of quality screens and not a public schoolboy in sight, total back to back RL. Now that’s what I call a proper pub.

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  3. And good to see the spaces that more pretentious pubs waste filling up with poncy jam jars are occupied by a
    chugging of charity boxes.
    Help for Heroes should do well in Aldershot and the other looks to be a local one.
    No Oxfam …

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  4. I was a member of Surrey/Hants Borders CAMRA for a few years in the early 80s, but that’s a pub I never went in. A Courage house back in the day.

    Interesting to see from WhatPub that it still adheres to the traditional afternoon closure Mon-Thu, something that no pubs to my knowledge do around here – they either open all day, or not at all at lunchtime.

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  5. That barrow reminds me. Do you think you could get CAMRA to include a rule on the maximum number of floral displays for a pub frontage in the AGM resolutions? As ever I’m asking for a friend who likes Donnington.

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  6. “Beats bottles of Golden Jubilee ale in cabinet displays”

    I quite like the lightbulb one.

    Which reminds me; one time when my darling wife went on military maneuvers I wrote her to let her know that with Spring coming I’d planted some bulbs for her in the flower bed. Alas, when she got home she was not pleased to see that they weren’t daffodils or some such but the 40 Watt variety. 🙂

    “A world where Old Golden Head is exotic”

    Is that Schweppes bottle doubling as a jam jar?

    “A winner”

    Life is full of pleasant surprises if you look close enough. 🙂

    Cheers!

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      1. “Can’t believe I called “Old Golden Hen” “Old Golden Head” – you’re getting to me Russ 😉”

        LOL, I confess I didn’t notice that! (blush)

        “We must know more about “military maneuvers” – is that a euphemism.”

        Maybe “exercise” would be more apt. She was a cook for 20 years in the Canadian military*. Our military is so small that, even though she wore an air force uniform, she’d still be tagged for “playing soldiers” on a few occasions. 😉

        Cheers

        * – Actually, that’s how we met. She served me my first official meal at my first posting after training. Ten months later we were married. 🙂

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