A week of continuous travel, not much of it to pubs, and now I’m on my fourth (4th) train of the day and it’s only 10.13.
On Monday night I was in Oxford for my penultimate Oxon tick, Mrs RM parking the campervan in the first available car park (it’s a hellish city) and shouting “Be quick”, but I was already gone.
11 minutes ? 8, max. Time for some photos at dusk and I can still make it back in 20.
Nick of Prop Up The Bar infamy had warned me that The Plough @ no.38 would disappoint, and it didn’t disappoint in, er, disappointing.
It’s no Sam Smiths 3 Goat’s Heads, for sure.
Never trust a pub with writing on its ancient walls.
Or a “greeter”, however nice they are, telling you to SIT DOWN as it’s table service only.
Unlike Burford, the Plough is sparsely customed (?) on Monday evening, despite a stout from XT being pretty wonderful (3.5+) and the place looking a lovely place for “hearty eats”.
I tried to pay immediately, conscious of time, but you try paying in a place with table service mate.
I phoned Mrs RM to ask her to check if she needed to pay, swiped my card, necked my beer,
read the Oxford almanac from 1871 in the Gents, and sprinted back.
Mrs RM was still trying to work out the charge, which seemed to be £8.80 for ANY time over 20 minutes. Thieving Oxford.
I knew we’d be tight, checking in the next pub it seemed we’d missed the cut-off by a minute, and also had an extra £3 to use the Late Pay function.
So my half cost £15.30. I could have flown to Malaga for that. Mrs RM was livid, and rightly so. I would need to buy her TWO large glasses of Chardonnay later.
retiredmartin 
That’s a rather grim looking pub, but a rather nice looking restaurant.
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Excellent summary.
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Looks mostly like the fake “pubs” we get here in the States, except for having cask beer and the hop vine decorations.
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Yes, says “English Pub” but far from it.
In it’s defence, looks a nice restaurant.
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Charging the extortionate sum of £8.80, for any time over 20 minutes, effectively means Oxford have declared open season on the private motorist. Whilst I can understand the authorities not wishing to see their city clogged up with traffic, providing fairly priced parking is a reasonable way of balancing the former, against allowing car-borne visitors to shop, sight-see and take refreshment in the city.
In this part of the country, several towns have scrapped their park & ride schemes, presumably because they weren’t generating sufficient revenue. I wonder if that has happened in Oxford?
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The option was to use the Park & Ride (assuming it was still running at 7pm), which would have effectively added an hour to our 20 minute stop as we’d have needed to wait for a bus, wait while it filled up and be dropped at an inconvenient location before waiting for a return bus.
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Just catching up with your posts – or perhaps I’ve been in a grumpy huff being accused of infamy!
Sorry Oxford didn’t deliver a more enticing pub for the hefty parking charge. (Rail station car park? The biggest rip-off of all our parking, in a rotten city to drive to).
I rarely visit The Plough because of the table service, but they do serve a good pint of XT.
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Don’t Oxford folk have interns to delegate the actual reading of blogs to ?
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