HALF A DOZEN PUBS FROM EVERY COUNTY. No. 3 – BUCKINGHAMSHIRE

Let’s return to my festive series highlighting the pick of the pubs in each Beer Guide chapter, inviting you to make up the round half dozen.

One immediate surprise; picking five (let alone 6) must visits in a county is tougher than you’d think. Obviously when we get to Sheffield there’ll be six within half a mile of my house.

The highlight of pubbing in our 3rd county is the last tick, the one that allows you to use “All Bucked Up” as your blog title for a fifth time. Word Press lets you repeat blog titles, you know.

The county is low-key, the pubs a bit too foody to be classics, and your best bet might be a pint down by the Grand Union Canal where Bucks meets Beds and Herts.

Great Missenden – The George Ale House (last visited 2021). One of the better Home Counties discoveries of recent years, a drinkers pubs in a village you might want to wander around and be amazed by what antiques cost these days.

The George looks like it could be an antique shop, but the beer and seating is top notch.

Brill – The Pheasant (last visited 2021). Only really included because it’s next to the windmill, the one I always tell you is in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,

which you MUST visit. The pub itself is average and you’ll wonder what the fuss is about and whether you should have gone in the gastro horror of the Pointer instead.

“But the warmth of the staff, the pointless banter, and the constant coming and going for fag breaks”; they’ll win you over.

Aylesbury – The King’s Head (last visited 2016). Your smart pub in a scruffy county town, the King’s Head is also a National Trust property so you get uniformed staff who call you “Sir”, and I know how much my readers value that,

but on a return visit I warmed to it due to a mixed crowd and some tremendous Chiltern beer, and beer quality and Bucks rarely go together. And it’s just possible you’ll find a surprise in Aylesbury (you won’t).

Bourne End – Black Lion (last visited 2019). Oooh, this brings back happy memories.

Took me a couple of goes to find open, rewarded with a quirky sprawling place with Brakspear and roaring fires and that huge Scotch egg at the top.

Beaconsfield Services – Hope & Champion (last visited 2022).

Because I don’t really think you can say you’ve visited a place till you’ve had breakfast and beer at a motorway service station. It’s actually a really nice place, table overlooking a lake and they take their ale seriously here;

Anyhow, over to you for a sixth. Find me somewhere in Newport Pagnell I don’t know.

If I get no suggestions I’ll nominate the main Wetherspoons on Midsummer Boulevard in Milton Keynes.

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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.

12 thoughts on “HALF A DOZEN PUBS FROM EVERY COUNTY. No. 3 – BUCKINGHAMSHIRE”

  1. “your best bet might be a pint down by the Grand Union Canal where Bucks meets Beds and Herts“ – I agree.

    Would also nominate The White Horse in Hedgerley.

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      1. Forgotten about that one: checking, was last there Jan 2020. Of course food is important to it, but it’s defying the Bucks Tendency and still feels much more pubby than restauranty.

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  2. For me, Bucks is a county with quite a few nearly great pubs that almost always tip over into being that bit too foody (gotta pay the bills). One had a soft spot for was The White Lion at St Leonards (allegedly highest pub in the Chilterns, which is not the most spectacular geographical claim). Postcode is a Herts one but St Leonards is definitely in Bucks by about a mile. Shut for seven years, have not been out there since it reopened a couple of summers ago. Looking around t’Internet the few internal shots suggest it’s (pretty inevitably) gone very restauranty inside.

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  4. As with Berkshire, there used to be some good unspoilt Brakspear pubs in the south of the county.

    Agreed that Aylesbury, along with Taunton and Bedford, is one of the more forgettable county towns.

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  5. I don’t know any of your five pubs despite having spent 34 nights, over a month, in Buckinghamshire – twelve in Stony Stratford over fifty years ago, ten at Youth Hostels, eight in the Red Lion at Wendover and four with friends.

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