It’s becoming a tradition that our first and last beer garden sessions of the year should happen at The Rising Sun in Pensford.
It’s not the best in the world but this St Austell pub in a village just outside Bristol does have three things going for it.
First, the Proper Job is always amazing. Or at least it seems so. It might taste that bit better because we’ve usually hiked across country and have made ourselves weary and thirsty before we drink it.
Secondly, there’s a bus stop right outside with a reliable service back to Bristol, even on a Sunday. So we get to have a proper country pub experience but can still be back in town quicker than from some of our more remote “every pub in Bristol” jaunts.
Thirdly, there’s the perfection of the beer garden itself.
Nestled in a crook of the narrow, fast-moving River Chew, it’s overlooked by a medieval church on one side, and a huge Victorian railway viaduct on the other. It has to be one of the most visually appealing beer gardens in the country.
We hadn’t set out to create a tradition. It’s more that there are lots of country walks that seem naturally to end in Pensford.
In the spring, it’s all about the isolated flowers, noticing the increased volume and density of birdsong, and watching for the identifiable leaves of wild garlic in patches of wet waterside woodland.
In autumn, it’s about supplementing our picnic with blackberries and apples along the way, and estimating what percentage of the leaves have turned to gold. How far away might winter be?
On this occasion, we simply walked out of our front door, out through inner city Bristol, then suburban Bristol, past bigger and bigger factory sports fields (Imperial Tobacco), and across commons, until the city finally ran out.
Then we tramped across muddy fields, nervously treading around horses, cows, and boggy patches – until we were over the hills and far away.
The whole time, we were soaking up sunshine, and marveling at banks of daffodils on verges, in council car parks, on country lanes, and in villages like Norton Malreward.
The first sign that you’re approaching Pensford is the viaduct cutting across the landscape. We headed down the slope and beneath its giant arches, popping out in a lane behind the pub.
At the bar, in muddy boots, we were surrounded by people eating Sunday roasts – and people who hadn’t got the memo about pub food in 2025:
“Do you have a table for five for Sunday lunch?”
“Sorry, not without booking.”
“Can I just get a bowl of chips or a burger or something?”
“Sorry, not on Sunday.”
“Just a bowl of chips, though…?”
We wouldn’t have minded some food either, as it happens, but at least we weren’t naïve enough to expect to just turn up and get any.
Sitting on a slightly wobbly, slightly damp bench, we turned our faces to the sun and listened to the sound of running water, laughing children, and church bells ringing.
And we drank.
When you’ve not tasted St Austell Proper Job for a while you forget that it really is a punchy, flowery, bitter beer.
It too felt like a harbinger of the summer to come.
Courage built a lot of new pubs in the period of economic rejuvenation after World War II, as documented in a volume held at Bristol’s central library.
A few weeks ago a special exhibition was laid on at the library on the subject of beer and pubs. Items from the reference collection were put on display in an ornate wood-panelled room and visitors were invited to shuffle round and have a nose about.
We visited and were drawn at once to a hefty hardback volume collecting together editions of The Golden Cockerel, the house magazine of Courage, Barclay & Simonds, formed in 1960 when Courage acquired Simonds of Reading.
These particular issues of the magazine were from 1962 to 1964 and seemed to include a remarkable number of pub openings.
The Treble Chance, Southmead, Bristol, in 2023.
The Treble Chance, Southmead, Bristol
The issue for winter 1962 contained news of the opening of The Treble Chance on the Southmead estate.
It was opened by G.H. Boucher, former director of Bristol United Breweries, and father of A.R. Boucher, the chairman of CBS’s West Country division.
“Mr G.H. Boucher remarked that, although he had been to a number of new houses and attended many openings, he had never come across a more attractive new public house than this one. He complimented the architects who had designed the house and Messrs. C.H. Pearce & Sons Limited who had built it, and was very confident that, in the Treble Chance, Courages had a winner.”
There’s something quite quaint in the traditions attached to the opening of new pubs, even very modern ones, on very modern estates. ‘Ale conners’ tasted the beer, an ale-garland was hoisted, the inn sign was unveiled, and a toast was proposed.
For the record, the architects were CBS’s own in-house team under the direction of N.E. Morley, DSC, FRIBA, and the publicans at the time of opening were Patricia Whiteford and her husband Maurice.
The Treble Chance is notable because it’s one of only a handful of post-war pubs that survives in Bristol. We drank there in March 2023 and, though it was quite friendly, it had certainly lost any trace of mid-century modernism.
If your demise was scheduled and you had time to make visits to three pubs, which would they be?
This was the ridiculous high-stakes thought exercise we conducted on our return visit to The Barrels in Hereford on Saturday night.
It was prompted by our wondering whether The Barrels might be (Martin Taylor style) a top 100 pub. Or maybe even top ten.
Why three? Because it’s impossible – but it does help you make tough decisions.
In the past, we’ve played a similar game with Beatles songs: if you can only keep 10, and the rest get wiped forever, which are they? (We’ll share our respective lists on Patreon, for those who are interested.)
The temporal question
The big question when it comes to choosing three pubs is whether you can travel in time.
We immediately began talking about The Nags Head in Walthamstow c.2007, The Star Inn at Crowlas near Penzance c.2014, and The Blue Ball at Worrall, near Sheffield, in the run up to Christmas.
Ray wondered about The Artillery Inn, Exeter, c.1982, when his parents ran it, his dad was in his prime, and Ray’s only worry was whether he might get that X-Wing fighter for Christmas.
We say, if you’re having a go at this yourself, feel free to range about the space time continuum – but that is probably a slightly different question.
Roam if you want to
The next question is what we mean by ‘pub’ and whether we’re just thinking of the UK, or even England.
In that piece, researched and written in 2016, we said that the term gastropub had essentially died in 2011 when The Good Food Guide stopped using it because it no longer felt like a special category.
But no sooner was 20th Century Pub published than we began to notice a change in the market.
The success of the gastropub, both as a business model and as a buzzword, took it into the mainstream. By the late noughties, received wisdom across much of the pub industry was that you needed to offer food to survive and the wet-led pub was on the way out… Wetherspoon pubs, with their vast menus and low prices, further normalised the expectation that a pub would have food available if you wanted it… We’d argue this has reversed somewhat in the past decade. Between micropubs and taprooms, new wet-led enterprises have opened in most towns and cities in England, and are often go-to destinations.
There were also stories of pubs closing their kitchens, reducing their food offer to simple snacks, reducing the hours of food service, or farming out the work to pop-ups and food trucks.
Now, in 2025, if we think of our favourite Bristol pubs, hardly any of them serve food, and when they do it’s not ‘pub grub’ but pizzas, burgers, dumplings, noodles…
You might think, great! Those things are all better than microwaved lasagna and Brake’s Brothers steak and ale pie.
But part of the appeal of pub grub was its simplicity and variety. A party of six could go to the pub and between them eat fish and chips, linguini, a big salad, a burger, a pie, and bangers and mash.
That’s exactly the menu our acquaintance was after when they asked for a recommendation the other night.
Like many people not obsessed with pubs and the pub trade, they hadn’t noticed the change, and just assumed pub grub would still be there when they needed it.
It’s interesting how often we find ourselves in pubs that no longer serve food and hear people ask at the bar: “Is the kitchen open?” They haven’t updated their mental model from before the pandemic.
Trying to answer the question we’d been asked, we debated The Barley Mow a bit – it does have food, but when is it served? We couldn’t find this out online and nobody wanted to phone to ask.
In the end, we suggested a 10-minute walk into town where The Old Fish Market, a rather corporate Fuller’s pub, is still selling the 1990s gastropub dream.
Our correspondent was very happy with apparently excellent crispy pork belly and roasted vegetables.
That’s it, we suppose – pub grub has become the preserve of chains who can still squeeze profit out of it through centralised supply chains and carefully costed menus.
This is perhaps also why the Fuller’s and Young’s pound chains did so well over the Christmas period: they provide food when people most want it.
On a more positive note, we have observed a resurgence in the availability of clingfilm-wrapped cheese and onion rolls, pies, pasties and scotch eggs.
That includes at The Kings Head, one of our favourite Bristol pubs, whose beer offer skews hip and crafty.
Snacks like that might not satisfy those in search of a hearty three-course meal but they’re certainly welcome when, otherwise, you’d have to abandon a cosy spot, and ale on good form, to find something to eat.
We spent Saturday night exploring the pubs of Easton in Bristol, revisiting some we’ve not been to for a while, and one completely new to us.
Easton is a couple of neighbourhoods across from ours. It’s got a reputation for alternative culture – anarchists, punks, hippies and graffiti.
But, like most places in Bristol, it’s been gentrifying rapidly and its many small terraced houses are increasingly likely to be painted grey with window boxes full of herbs, and bike sheds in the front yards.
The first pub on our crawl was The Whitehall Tavern which has taken us almost eight years to get around to visiting, making it our 311th Bristol pub.
Why the delay? Well, because from the outside it doesn’t look anything special, or especially inviting.
The moment we walked through the door, however, we realised we’d read the signals wrong. It was busy, warm, and lively. The crowd varied from twentysomething to 70+, from work boots to student scarves, from chess players to pool players, from tattooed cider punks to rockabilly hipsters.
It felt like a pub balanced on the sweet spot between traditional and gentrified, where incomers to the neighbourhood had been made welcome but not allowed to dominate.
It took a while to get served because there was only one person behind the bar.
“Got any help coming?” someone shouted.
“From 6pm,” he shouted back, running past with a fiver in one hand and a pint of cider in the other.
He was one of those professionals who was a pleasure to watch. He always knew who was next to be served and the regulars only had to raise a finger for their usual pint to be delivered.
When our turn finally came we ordered two pints of Butcombe Original. He pulled them two thirds of the way and left the foam to settle while he served two or three other people at lightning speed. Then he topped off our drinks and said:
“Six pounds, please.”
Did he say six pounds? For two pints? We didn’t really believe it until we saw the amount on the screen of the card machine.
The beer was excellent, too – cool, fresh, and presented in a perfectly clean branded glass.
From our corner by the dartboard we watched strangers play pool, listened to middle-aged men debate the football, and observed a conversation that seemed to be simmering up to an argument.
“Dad would have loved this,” said Ray. “Especially the price of the beer.”
Frightfully nice
Our next destination, by way of contrast, was The Greenbank, a large corner pub that we would guess was built in around 1900.
The Greenbank is a middle class stronghold – one of those Nice Pubs with small plates, posh burgers, quirky artwork for sale, and artfully mismatched furniture.
“It’s like being in an Antic pub in London in about 2012,” said Jess, not disapprovingly.
Though the pub feels as if it might be in London, and the conversations around us had Home Counties accents, the beer is Bristolian all the way.
A very pleasant barman served us cask Beer Factory Everytime (cask) in a dimpled mug (a key signifier of a posh pub these days) and a half of Wiper & True Espresso Martini coffee stout. This round came to £6.75 – which, by 2025 standards, isn’t bad value either.
Having taken against it on a previous visit – we can’t quite remember why – this made us think we ought to visit more often, if only to eavesdrop on the entertaining conversations of people in mustard-coloured beanie hats.
Samosa intermission
After two rounds we needed a snack and so detoured to Jeevan Sweets on Stapleton Road, where a sign prohibits the consumption of alcohol or tobacco.
We ordered two samosas (£1 each) and a single piece of mango barfi (75p) and ate them as we wandered towards our next pub.
“I had my first samosa when I was six,” said Jess with her mouth full. “It changed my life.”
“The first time I came to stay with you in London you couldn’t wait to buy me a samosa from Pete’s Fish Bar.”
The samosa is superior boozing food. Starchy, crunchy, and only mildly spicy, it lines the stomach without knackering the palate. Pubs should sell them as a matter of course.
The Sugar Loaf
A classic big light pub
Last time we went to The Sugar Loaf it was struggling and felt more like a youth club than a pub.
We weren’t surprised when it closed for a while and have been following the story of its resurrection under new management for a while.
Again, first impressions were good. It felt brighter, cleaner and more friendly, while retaining a down-to-earth East Bristol atmosphere.
We both ordered Timothy Taylor Landlord which, along with Wye Valley Butty Bach, is a permanent part of the offer. It was excellent, making three great pints of cask ale in a row, in pubs that we haven’t particularly noticed cask heads enthusing about.
A couple of years ago Steve ‘Carsmile’ Hewitt used the phrase ‘big light pub’ to describe the typical Sheffield boozer. It could definitely apply to The Sugar Loaf, too, where there aren’t many shadows to hide in.
We listened to a conversation in Spanish from one side and the click of pool balls from the other. Every now and then we’d catch a whiff of weed from somebody passing by. Three skateboarders wandered in, wandered round, and wandered out.
“If the Whitehall is more your kind of pub,” said Jess, “and this is more mine.” (Context.)
Punk’s not dead
Finally, with some trepidation, we made our way to The Chelsea Inn. Not because it’s a particularly scary pub but because when we last visited we got the distinct feeling we were too square to be there.
It’s not all about us or how comfortable we feel, after all, but how comfortable other people might feel with us standing there in the corner looking like a pair of geography teachers, or council inspectors.
The first thing we noticed when we arrived at the door was a sign saying that, while dogs are welcome, they have to be out by 7pm because after that time the pub just becomes too loud for them.
We walked in to find half the space given over to a drum kit and various amplifiers. Around the bar were crowded people in leather jackets, denim, and army surplus. There were studs, chains, piercings and tattoos everywhere. Most of the hair was white, grey, pink or purple.
There was also a small child in ear defenders running around in their pyjamas in a state of extreme excitement. They were high-fived by the regulars, hoisted in the air by a barman, and generally treated like royalty.
We were delighted to see that the cask ale on offer was from Ashley Down Brewery, a tiny outfit run by Vince Crocker, former co-landlord of The Drapers Arms.
He’s a slightly reclusive figure, Vince, better at brewing than schmoozing, but he seems to have a fond status as the Gandalf of Bristol brewing.
As a result, his beer turns up in all sorts of unexpected places, with its handmade wooden pump clips bearing the slogan “Nice with crisps.”
This particular beer, Red Stoat, was rather marvellous: as round and rich as Fuller’s ESB but with more pine and spice.
For those counting, that’s four great pints of cask in four pubs on a single evening – full house!
While the band finished setting up, the child in pyjamas had a go on the drum kit, with the encouragement of the crowd. They weren’t half bad, either.
We slipped out just as the music began in earnest, leaving the punks to their anarchy.
