Tag Archives: cornwall

Beer for Breakfast on Flora Day

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At a little before 7 a.m., as the first dance nears the centre of Helston, its arrival heralded by the brass and drums of the town band, we see our first pints of Spingo Middle. They’re in plastic glasses and the man and woman drinking them look like they need strong coffee rather than beer, but that’s not what today is all about.

We hit the Blue Anchor at not much after 8:30 a.m. and find it busy already. Breakfasts are being served to the small army of temporary staff and to tourists. Some lads from up north nurse their pints, making macho noises but slyly nursing their pints, not wanting to fall by the wayside too early in the day. Some older local men, experienced drinkers, aren’t being remotely cautious. This is, after all, Helston’s great debauch — bigger than Christmas and New Year put together. We don’t, in all honesty, enjoy our pints. Our mouths taste of coffee and toothpaste and we end up feeling slightly queasy.

Back outside, with the seemingly never-ending children’s dance underway, we notice the crowd parting, not for a top-hatted local VIP, but for a pin of Spingo — a blue-striped metal cask — being wheeled from the Blue Anchor to a private party somewhere in the back streets by two grinning men who look like they’ve won the lottery.

It’s not all Spingo. Youngsters sitting on walls and first-floor windowsills neck Budweiser, Corona and Magner’s cider. Before long, every alleyway we cut down is scattered with empty bottles and cans. Wedges of lime squish under our feet. Through back garden gates, we catch glimpses of parties where everyone is holding a glass of wine or a small green bottle of French supermarket lager.

By the evening, as we return to the Blue Anchor for a last pint before the bus ride home, we find a huge bouncer in attendance. Physically intimidating, yes, but his manners are impeccable, and he shows great diplomacy in steering one drunk after another out of the pub and pointing them back towards their houses to sleep it off. They keep coming, the happy inebriates, walking imaginary tightropes, chuckling to themselves, hands on the walls for support. A glass smashes and we tense momentarily, but there are apologies and laughter, and the guv’nor, whose pub has been heaving for twelve hours, clears it up with a huge smile on his face.

This last pint of Spingo is not the best we’ve ever had — it’s a little warm and rather buttery, an inevitable result of upping production for the Big Day, perhaps — but it’s a pleasure just to be there amid the warm glow of a community at play.

The Yellow Restrained Chili Peppers

Harbour Beers at the Hand Bar, Falmouth.

On Friday, with some effort and multiple forms of public transport, we managed to make it to Falmouth for the tail-end of Harbour Brewing’s ‘meet the brewer’ event at the Hand Bar. We snagged a couple of ‘tasters’, but actually had much more fun afterwards drinking proper measures of beer we’d paid for, without the slightly awkward school assembly format and the heckling hipsters.

Aji Limon Pale Ale (6%) was interesting: aged in bourbon barrels, though that didn’t come over in any way we could detect, and with the addition of a particular variety of chili pepper chosen in consultation with a chef to provide additional citrus flavour. It gave only a very faint burn (to us, anyway, but then we’re fairly immune to chili heat) followed by a lot of dry spiciness — lemongrass and dried coconut came to mind. We think we liked it; we certainly found it interesting; and we were impressed at the thoughtfulness and restraint with which the brewers had employed a ‘non-beer’ ingredient.

Harbour IPA (5%) has come on a long way since we first tasted it, though it still doesn’t quite measure up, in our view, to the aromatic intensity of Brewdog’s Punk, which it has increasingly come to resemble. [UPDATE: said we weren't taking notes! We had IPA No.2.] What it lacked in perfume, however, it made up for to some extent with the very faintest roasted spice and seed flavours, presumably from the yeast. Nice. We’d drink more of this, if the chance arose.

Finally, a beer that we were surprised to be impressed by: No. 2 Pilsner (5.5%). Though Eddie from Harbour seemed keen not to talk it up too much — it’s intended as a middle of the road crowd-pleaser — we were delighted by its golden gleam, shaving-foam head and, most importantly, crisp cereal snap. It struck us as remarkably precise, with no bathtub brewery twang. It was better than both the big brand lager we’d ‘enjoyed’ with dinner and St Austell’s Korev, and is perhaps, we think, Harbour’s best chance at elbowing their way into the locked-down Cornish market. Too strong to drink by the litre, perhaps, but we wouldn’t giving it a shot if there was a decent beer garden anywhere nearby.

Harbour is a still a brewery finding its feet, but all the beers we tasted were well-made; and a couple were excellent. We’d certainly like to see more of them about.

Now here’s a thing: because the various pale ales and IPAs were coming from font-type taps, and we weren’t taking notes, we don’t know which were kegged and which were cask-conditioned, and certainly couldn’t guess.

World Beer in Penzance

Brooklyn Lager and Duvel at the Lamp & Whistle, Penzance.

It’s taken a while but, at last, we can now go to the pub in Penzance and drink Belgian and American beer, at the Lamp & Whistle, five minutes walk from the central station in the centre of town.

When we first moved to Penzance proper, we went to ‘the Lamp’ quite a bit, partly because it tended to have St Austell Proper Job in excellent condition, but also because it is one of the few places in the area not trading to some extent on the ‘cosy Cornish inn’ image. In fact, it feels as if it has been transplanted from a street corner in a trendy bit of South London. Then Proper Job disappeared, and we decided we preferred the atmosphere in the Dock Inn, and haven’t been back for a while, though we always peer through the window when we walk past.

When Tom Goskar tipped us off to the availability of Brooklyn Lager, however, we thought we ought to investigate, and we found quite a few changes. The ceiling has been fitted with what are technically known as ‘dangly stem glass holding rack things’, festooned with Chimay, Duvel and Bacchus branded glassware; a towering, ostentatious Brooklyn Lager font adorns the very centre of the bar; and there’s a brand-new-vintage Anchor Steam plaque fixed to the wall. It would seem that the James Clay rep has been.

These aren’t beers at the cutting edge of the import market (Chimay Rouge first hit Britain in 1974, Anchor Steam c.1979, at the start of the ‘world beer’ boom) but, come on, this is the wild west, and a town with a population of c.21,000, so they’re out on a limb going even this far. We’re delighted, at any rate.

We didn’t enjoy the keg Brooklyn Lager especially — it seemed less floral than the bottled incarnation with a lot of additional toffee flavour and, yes, actual rising, burp-inducing bubbles aka ‘fizz’. Chimay and Duvel, on the other hand, were a real treat, and scarcely more expensive than they are in supermarkets these days at £4.30 a bottle. (We paid £7.50 for a 330ml bottle of local ‘craft’ stout in Truro recently, so this question about the price of Belgian beer remains.)

There was also cask ale from the lesser-spotted Penpont Brewery, and evidence that the publicans’ real passion is for spirits in the wide selection of vodkas, rums and whiskies on the back shelf. (Żubrówka!)

If you’re in the area and fancy something a bit different, in terms of both ambience and beer selection, the Lamp might be just what you’re looking for.

We should mention that the Renaissance Cafe — not a pub! — also had Duvel with lovely glassware last time we went in.

Best Cornish Pubs 2013

Beer Wolf pub in Falmouth

Last year, we came up with a list of our favourite Cornish pubs, all of which remain worth a visit, but there has been a lot going on in the last year, and we’ve explored more, too, so it’s time for an update.

This list is personal and prejudiced — we do not have a team of inspectors in bowler hats making multiple visits with thermometers — but we hope beer geeks on holiday will find it useful.

The Driftwood Spars, St Agnes
The perfect place to end a coast walk, this pub, sitting on a beautiful cove, and with its own nearby brewery, has multiple rooms, wonky wooden beams, and plenty of cosy corners. On really nice days, the beer garden is a wonderful spot to sit and enjoy the big blue sky and the sound of the sea. (Blog post.)

Star Inn, Crowlas (Penzance)
CAMRA Cornwall pub of the year for 2013. It’s a little out of the way in a village between Penzance and St Ives, but buses in either direction stop right outside, and it does have a car park. No food, unless you count Caramacs and pork scratchings, and not remotely poshed-up, but the beer, brewed on site, is astoundingly good. Potion 9 is the one to go for. (Blog post.)

The Front, Falmouth
Though it now has competition, this large cellar pub still offers one of the more impressive ranges of local beer and cider in Cornwall. Though the beer sometimes lacks condition, most of it served on gravity, ‘bring your own food’, cheery bar staff and a warm atmosphere more than make up for it. Some ‘craft keg’ and posh bottles, too. (Blog post.)

The Dock Inn, Penzance
Our usual port of call in Penzance — one of the few places you can get Spingo beers other than at the Blue Anchor, often in better condition than on their home turf, with a very friendly welcome and good food. (Blog post.)

The Blue Anchor, Helston
This pub, with a brewery out back, is a must visit. Popular with locals and tourists, its multi-room layout still includes a bar/lounge divide, though we’ve always felt welcome in both. The best place to find their special seasonal brews, too. (Blog post.)

Old Ale House, Truro
This is as near as Skinner’s get to a brewery tap. It’s cosy with some lovely period features — not only Victorian, but also faded relics of the ‘real ale revolution’. Their best beer, Porthleven, is usually available. (Blog post.)

Beer Wolf Books, Falmouth
Opening just before Christmas last year, this pub-bookshop in a charming half-timbered building, has quickly gained a reputation for its unusual (for Cornwall) range of beer. Recently, alongside carefully chosen Cornish ales such as Potion 9 from the Penzance Brewing Company, there have been beers from Dark Star, Marble and other well-regarded ‘up country’ brewers. (Blog post.)

The Galleon, Fowey
This pub took us by surprise: despite being in a modern building, it is a free house, and offered a slightly more interesting range of beers than usual, all in very good condition. There are several pubs in Fowey and they all seem fine but, if you’re bored of St Austell’s beer, which you might well be after a few days, this is the place to come. (Blog post.)

The Lifeboat Inn, St Ives
Owned by St Austell and sitting on the harbourside, this pub is nicer illuminated by St Ives’ famously gorgeous natural light than it is in the evening, when it becomes a bit ‘orange’. We’ve been in several times in the last year and been impressed by the staff and the quality of the beer, even out of season. A good place to find St Austell seasonals, too.

The Top House Inn, Lizard (village)
A nice enough pub which we’re recommending chiefly for its location and the chance to find a few St Austell rarities (this is one of two places we’ve found their old-fashioned <4% IPA). The perfect place to finish a long walk, sitting outside with a pint of Proper Job and a bag of crisps, watching the bus stop in the village square.

 

General tips

  1. In any given Cornish cove, there will usually be more than one place to drink, but don’t assume by default the ‘traditional pub’ is the best option: sometimes, the contemporary beachside cafe/surf-shack is where you’ll find all the life, a warm welcome, and better beer.
  2. St Austell are utterly dominant. If they own several of the pubs in a town or village, and they usually do, the managed houses (usually with the newest signage and uniformed staff) tend to offer (of course) a more reliable experience, but the slightly run-down pubs with tenant landlords, though they can be a lottery, are often more characterful and cosy.
  3. Newer Cornish breweries such as Harbour and Rebel are hard to find in pubs, thanks to the St Austell lockdown, but seem to be making inroads into delis, cafes, restaurants and bars with their bottled beers at least. But check prices before you commit: we were charged £7.50 for a 330ml bottle of Rebel Mexicocoa in a bar in Truro.
  4. Cornwall does have some proper rough pubs, but they’re usually very easy to spot. We went in one once by mistake and weren’t murdered, though we did get asked, with curiosity rather than menace, whether we were undercover police officers on a drugs sting.

This is the type of blog post that rarely gets many comments, but which lingers in the Googletubes forever. When we’re in a new town, we always search ‘[TOWN X] beer blog’. Even if all it turns up is one post from 2009 with spelling mistakes, written by someone with different tastes to us, it still tells us more than any number of guide books. So, with that in mind, we’re also trying to put together a list of such posts, organised by region. Here’s what we’ve got so far. Let us know if you’ve seen any other good ‘uns.

The Campaign for Real Cream Teas

Cream tea at Selworthy in Devon

Photo by Heather via Flickr Creative Commons.

That’s right — this post isn’t about beer, it’s about lovely, lovely tea, as served with scones, clotted cream and jam. While a cool pint of beer is our favourite way to finish a tiring walk on a summer’s day, a cream tea is almost as good, and we’ve given a lot of thought over the last few years as to what makes for a good one.

1. Scones

Scones don’t keep well. After a few hours, they become dry, brittle and mealy. To get the best scones, look for a busy cafe with a kitchen. Smaller places are probably making them off-site or — worse — ‘refreshing’ them in a microwave, which stops them being dry by making them soggy. Worst of all? Scones in plastic wrappers. If you see these, run a mile.

Scones baked too high or for too long can quickly develop the consistency of granite: look for a light colour and a bit of a spring. In our experience, they tend to be better if shaped with a serrated cutter.

Some people will tell you that fruit scones (with raisins or sultanas) are an abomination and have no part in a proper cream tea, and they are certainly a novelty in Cornwall.

2. Jam

We will respect the traditions of Cornwall and talk about jam before cream. (More on that later.) Its role is to cut through the richness of the cream with some acidity and sweetness. Good sign: pots of homemade jam with spoons sticking out of them, ready for dolloping into serving dishes. Bad sign: individual plastic catering portions of no-brand jam-style fruit-flavoured gelatine spread. Dollops, not servings is a good rule of thumb.

Though some mavericks do offer blackcurrant, apricot or other flavours of jam, you really want red flavoured. Raspberry is fine, but strawberry — with pieces of fruit in evidence — is best.

We once had a really classy cream tea that came with several very ripe, fresh strawberries instead of jam. This was an acceptable substitution.

3. Cream

The cream tea is, really, an excuse to eat clotted cream, because it would be wrong to scarf it on its own with a spoon. (But try telling Boak’s Dad that…)

Clotted cream without an off-white, cracked crust is a waste of time. That means that, perhaps counter-intuitively, industrially produced single servings are the way to go. Rodda’s of Cornwall has a virtual monopoly on the global market, and for good reason: they have perfected the art of producing tubs of every size with a consistent, satisfying crust.

Whipped cream, especially squirted from a can, is never an acceptable substitute. (We’re looking at you, that terrible cafe in York!)

4. Tea

A delicately flavoured, subtle infusion is no match for a gobful of fat, butter and sugar. You need char: dark, bitter tea with a bit of welly. What a lot of people don’t realise about British tea is that it’s not a genteel affectation: it’s a powerful stimulant.

A good cream tea comes with a pot of tea, and a second pot of hot water for topping up. Loose leaf tea is a touch of class, but we don’t mind teabags. Delicate china cups filled with tea so strong you could use it to stain wood is an amusing juxtaposition, but a mug is just as good.

Posh tea with a ‘contemporary’ brand — the type that gets advertised with a sign outside the cafe — is rarely much cop, at least not in this context, but there’s plenty of Fair Trade tea with poke about these days.

5. Volume and value for money

Many cream teas come with two scones which we find a bit much. One scone, however, is usually not enough. The best places let you pick and choose, so that one and a half scones becomes an option. Perfect!

There is not, as far as we have noticed, a correlation between price and quality: we’ve paid £7 for rubbish, and £2.50 for homemade perfection.

Rules and regulations

The order in which jam and cream are applied to the scone is a matter of lighthearted banter between Devonians and the Cornish. (Wait, what do you mean it’s not lighthearted?) In Cornwall, jam goes first, with cream dolloped on top, which is how Boak prefers it — with cream as the main event. Bailey, having grown up partly in Devon, finds this perverse: the cream ought to be spread like butter, so that there’s some in every mouthful.

If you do it ‘wrong’ in either county, you won’t get told off, but you might get gently ribbed.

We’ll be back to beer tomorrow…

Pub Crawling in Padstow

Sign outside The Harbour Inn pub.

Padstow in North Cornwall is best known for its connection with TV chef Rick Stein and for its ‘Obby ‘Oss, of which more later. Its attractive and compact town centre, however, also supports six pubs, which struck us as the perfect number for a Saturday night crawl.

Having been deprived of St Austell’s Proper Job for a couple of months, we headed straight to the London Inn, outside which a sign promised a very nearly full range of the local brewing giant’s cask ales. Inside, we found a pleasing lack of head-office-approved corporate slickness, and genuine clutter on the walls, rather than the stuff that comes by the kilo from pub decor companies. Nothing special, but comfortable, and the PJ was very good. We considered staying, but, no, the crawl must go on.

The Golden Lion Inn, Padstow.The interior of the Golden Lion, just across the road, looked strangely familiar, and then it dawned on us: we’d seen it in the documentary Oss Oss Wee Oss (Alan Lomax, 1953) on the BFI DVD Here’s a Health to the Barley Mow. As the stable of one of the Padstow ‘Obby ‘Osses, the Golden Lion is a culturally and historically significant pub, and its low beams and dark corners are very appealing. It was uncomfortably quiet, however, and the Tintagel Castle Gold was lacking zing.

We soon found out why the other pubs were quiet: everyone was at The Old Ship, where it was standing room only, because a Johnny Cash tribute act was set to perform. It made much of offering Brain’s S.A. — a rarity in Cornwall, it’s true, but hardly anything to shout about. Sharp’s Own, sweetish at the best of times, was also as flat as a pancake. What’s the opposite of cosy? That’s what the Ship was. As the faux-Man in Black launched into ‘Folsom Prison Blues’, we slipped away, leaving our drinks unfinished.

We then commenced a run of three St Austell pubs.

The Shipwrights felt a bit like a pub-themed fast food restaurant, with that particularly lurid orange wood finish that too often characterises modern pub refits, and we didn’t like being cleaned up around (at 9:30!), though the barmaid who served us was very chatty and pleasant. There were more fruit machines than customers. Tribute and Proper Job were in decent enough nick, too.

The Old Custom House was also quiet, with flickering TV screens on every spare surface. The highlight here was the new bottled version of 1913 Stout, tasting excellent despite its clear bottle, and served in an appropriately vintage-feeling straight-sided pint glass.

We hit the Harbour Inn in the run up to closing time. It is the stable for the rival ‘Oss, the Blue Ribbon or Peace ‘Oss, and had a pleasant, lived-in feel. Even though it’s huge, and we had the place almost to ourselves, the landlord and landlady made us feel very welcome, hitting the perfect balance between attentiveness and giving us space. When they wanted us to leave, it was hinted at with a very gentle: ‘Ahem… will you be wanting any more drinks at all?’

Is Padstow worth a visit for beer geeks? No. Is there enough to keep a pub-lover entertained if they’re visiting for other reasons? Definitely. Bear in mind, though, that in season, none of these pubs will be as quiet as we found them on a chilly night in March.

Top Ten Cornish Beers 2013

Chocolate vanilla stouts.

Chocolate vanilla stouts from Harbour and Rebel. (Honourable mentions, below.)

Last year, as the season approached, we put together lists of our favourite Cornish beers and pubs. Those lists were fine then, but things are changing fast on the beer scene in Cornwall, and we though we ought to revisit our ‘top tens’ before the new season. (Though floods, hail and gales suggest it’s not here quite yet.)

So, for 2013, here are the cask-conditioned beers we’ve particularly enjoyed in pubs in Cornwall in the last year. We could easily have named five beers from Penzance Brewing Co., and another five from St Austell, but have tried to ‘spread the love’.

  1. Driftwood Spars – Dêk Hop (3.8%). Pale amber, flinty and tannic; hoppy without being flowery. (What we said last year.)
  2. NEW ENTRY Harbour Brewing – Light Ale (3.2% when we tried it). Super-pale, with lemon peel zinginess, tonic bitterness and a restrained aroma.
  3. Penzance Brewing Company — Potion 9 (4%). A ‘pale and hoppy’ which continues to blow our minds every time we drink it: sessionable but complex, with the same fresh bread maltiness we find in the best Czech lagers.
  4. Penzance Brewing Company — Trink (5.2%). Potion’s big brother, edging towards Thornbridge Jaipur territory. Deeper in colour, stronger, and more honeyed than Potion, but with a distinct Eden Project exotic floweriness — Citra?
  5. NEW ENTRY Rebel Brewing — Eighty Shilling (5%). Somewhere between a stout and a mild in character; plummy, with a touch of roastiness, and a little coffee cream.
  6. Skinner’s — Porthleven (4.8%). You wouldn’t know this gently-perfumed golden ale was from the same brewery as Betty Stogs. Not outrageously flamboyant in its aroma, each pint leaves the throat just dry enough to demand another.
  7. NEW ENTRY Spingo — Ben’s Stout (4.8%). As served at the Blue Anchor, one of the few decent dark Cornish beers, even if it is a little variable. We find ourselves craving it. Like black tea with brown sugar, in a good way.
  8. Spingo — Middle  (5%) A classic, and an illustration of a typical sweetish West Country beer. Keeps improving, too, and now has a little more dryness and a good malty snap.
  9. St Austell — Proper Job (4.5%) The best of St Austell’s regular beers, but not found in all of their pubs. It was modeled on a US IPA and, though lighter-bodied than many of those, does provide a satisfying whack of citrus hop character.
  10. St Austell — Tribute (4.2%) With Sharp’s Doom Bar and Skinner’s Betty Stogs, part of the bog standard line up on a Cornish free house bar, but by far the best of the three. Actually an interesting beer (custom Vienna-type malt, US hops) and, on good form, a delight. (We said the same last year.)

Honourable mentions

  • Few of Sharp’s regular beers really float our boat but their specials (e.g. Hayle Bay Honey IPA) can be very characterful, and we loved their Connoisseur’s Choice bottled beers.
  • Harbour and Rebel are both making some very interesting bottled beers, e.g. chocolate vanilla stouts.
  • St Austell’s Korev Lager, which we hated at first, continues to rise in our estimation. Not a ‘challenging’ beer, it is certainly very satisfying, especially on a hot summer’s day. Their spring and summer seasonals tend to be variations on Proper Job but lower in alcohol and were stunning last year. And need we mention 1913 Stout again?

As before, breweries who aren’t mentioned and think they ought to be should drop us an email, or comment below, and we’ll tell them why.

Beer with flavours, but not flavoured

La Soccarada beer.

There’s been plenty of thinking recently about whether adding ‘non-beery’ ingredients to beer is a good idea. (Here’s Jeff Alworth on that subject.) Broadly speaking, we tend to agree that throwing in things like cocoa nibs, doughnuts, maple syrup, wasabi and Tunnock’s Teacakes fails more often than it succeeds. This weekend, however, we were reminded that ‘wacky’ ingredients can work, if they’re used well, and we’re willing to broaden our minds a little.

First, on Friday night, we drank a Spanish beer, La Socarrada, imported by a Welsh delicatessen and restaurant chain, Ultracomida. We have pretty low expectations of Spanish ‘artisanal’ beer (based on past experience), and especially when it’s pitched as being ‘for food’ (maximum pretension, minimum flavour). La Soccarada, in a plain bottle with a glossy card tied around its neck, didn’t look promising, and the talk of rosemary and rosemary honey as key ingredients were immediately off-putting.

Things got worse when, on opening, it almost gushed, disturbing the yeast as it surged into the neck, which left us with a glass of cloudy, rather soupy, dark orange liquid. Our first reactions: “Oh, no! Eugh!” But then we thought about that reaction: were we being like those people who rejected Cascade hops for tasting ‘weird’ back in the seventies? We persevered. We find rosemary rather intense and a little nausea-inducing in great amounts; and, of course, we associate it with savouriness, which made it a challenge. (And being ‘challenged’ is overrated.) But we kept sipping, just like we can’t stop eating Twiglets once we start.

By the end, we’d decided that, actually, it was a pretty decent if rather unusual beer. The flavours certainly weren’t ‘dumbed down’ and were actually rather intriguing. In particular, we were interested to note how strongly the honey came through with that throat-catching, medicinal note that sets it apart from simple syrup. They didn’t sit superficially ‘on top’ of the beer, either, at least not any more than a big dry-hop aroma can be said to do so. It might benefit from more obvious hop bitterness, and a spicier yeast, but, in conclusion, we’d be pleased to drink this instead of Estrella Damm in a Spanish restaurant.

On Saturday, hammering the point home, we tasted Harbour Brewing Chocolate & Vanilla Imperial Stout alongside Rebel Brewing Co’s similarly conceived Mexi-Cocoa, and were impressed at the integration of the ‘flavourings’ into the body of both beers. Both were smooth and clean, with those ‘novelty’ ingredients bedded deep down, overlapping seamlessly with the bitterness of dark malts. Harbour’s milkier, sweeter beer was slightly more to our taste, beating Young’s Double Chocolate Stout and probably also Meantime’s take on the same idea.

We didn’t pay for any of these beers: La Soccarada was sent to us by Ultracomida’s PR firm, and Darren ‘Beer Today’ Norbury supplied samples of the stouts at a ‘sample sharing’ session in the back room of a local pub.

Tired beer and short tempers

Where's Wally?

Where’s Wally?

In the autumn, at the end of the season, Cornwall breathes a sigh of relief: not glad to see the back of the tourists, as such, but looking forward to a bit of ‘quality time’ with itself. Fast forward a couple of months, however, and the novelty of all that peace and quiet has worn off.

On the beer front (the most important bit) pubs we can usually rely on to have several decently-kept, interesting beers are down to one or two, the local market alone being unable to sustain any greater range. Wot no Proper Job? St Austell Tribute, which is a fine, fine beer at its best, becomes a lottery — shifting slowly, and too often staling long before the end of the cask, and ending up tasting like it often does in London.

And as for the atmosphere in the pub… well, without Emetts to roll eyes and chuckle at, the locals start winding each other up, like the increasingly twitchy subjects in an isolation study. For example…

An elderly man out for a few drinks with his wife, suited and booted, finds himself sat a few tables away from a large group of middle-aged people. They eventually pull instruments from pockets and bags and, with stamping feet, begin to sing folk songs in the finger-in-ear style. After ten minutes, as their volume increases, the aging gent becomes agitated, and then leaps to his feet: “I spend a lot of money here; I come here to relax; and I can’t hear myself speak over the noise of that…” He points at a bodhran. “Fucking drum thing!”

Roll on spring: fresh beer and fresh faces are what we need now.

The pleasure of the random pub

From Norman Garstin's 1889 painting of Penzance promenade, 'The Rain it Raineth Every Day'. (The Bath Inn is up the road on the left before the red brick hotel.)

From Norman Garstin’s 1889 painting of Penzance promenade, ‘The Rain it Raineth
Every Day’. (The Bath Inn is up the road on the left before the red brick hotel.)

When we lived in London, we were always wandering around the city, either for fun or because public transport had collapsed, and used to visit new pubs all the time as a result: “This looks nice, let’s pop in.”

But even in Penzance, where we’ve lived for nearly two years, and which isn’t quite as big as London, it turns out there are still good pubs to be found. We must have walked past the Bath Inn a hundred times but never thought to go in, until last night, when the north wind had us seeking shelter just off the promenade.

There was the usual moment’s hesitation on the threshold (once you walk into a pub, it takes some nerve to turn on your heel and walk straight out, if its particularly hairy) followed by relief on entering: all the signs were good, from the polished brass to the homely atmosphere and sounds of murmured conversation. The woman behind the bar — surely the landlady? — gave us a smile and a bit of chat, even though she’d never seen us before. (Apparently, some publicans think you have to earn anything other than a scowl over time.)

It’s a huge building, it turns out, with two rooms at the front, a large beer garden (not a crappy yard) and, at the end of what you might call a banqueting hall, another bar. Despite its size, it felt warm, cosy and, yes, properly pubby.

We drank the new St Austell seasonal, Ruck and Roll, which, thankfully, didn’t taste too strongly of rugby, and Sharp’s Own — both in good nick — and watched Friday evening get going.

Darts players, fifteen or so of them, colonised one section, bantering and knocking back vases of lager; a few older chaps installed themselves at the bar and did some serious contemplative drinking with bags of crisps for dinner; a few young couples found quiet corners to flirt in; a party of middle-aged northerners, perhaps on an out-of-season break, ordered pints of “smooth” (for the men) and white wine (for t’lasses).

This pub seems very much alive, because it does its thing well, with confidence, and people come. Simple.