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pubs

From pub to pub in the company of friends

Last Saturday I walked from Cheltenham to Broadway with a couple of old friends, stopping at a few contrasting pubs on the way.

This trip, planned months ago, happened to be just what I needed after my wobble the other week.

Traveling from Bristol, Stockport and London respectively, we met at the Sandford Park Ale House in Cheltenham on Friday night.

We compared walking boots, rucksacks and water bottles of varying degrees of fanciness.

They, both being dads, swapped advice on the management of children.

And we asked all the obvious, important questions.

“Have you heard from…?”

“Did you hear about…?”

“How’s your mum?”

“How’s work?”

It’s a good pub, the Ale House. Remarkably so. Smart without being snooty, busy but bearable.

The beer is good, too. There are lots, and well chosen, covering all the bases. But once I’d spotted Oakham Citra, fresh as spring water, I didn’t want to drink anything else.

On the way back to the hotel, we were tempted to have one more and chose a pub purely because it was advertising Butcombe, of which one of my companions is a particular fan.

A DJ was blasting out what sounded like The Best Ragga Album in the World… Ever while a single manic dancer threw himself around in the empty centre of the pub, enveloped in the stink of weed.

We should have turned round and walked out but the pub was almost empty and we dithered until we felt committed.

We sipped our flat, gravy-like bitter, groaning occasionally.

“Shall we ditch it?”

We ditched it.


The next morning I was, somehow, hungover. Not badly – just slight seasickness. It seemed unfair on three and a half pints of standard strength cask ale.

“Ugh,” said one of my pals, grappling with a slice of Premier Inn bacon. “I blame that dodgy Butcombe.”

By 9am we were on the way out of town and towards Cleeve Hill.

“Looming over Cheltenham like Mount Fuji,” someone observed.

As we schlepped, the conversation got sillier and more relaxed – not quite like when we were 21 but at least more interesting than house prices and kitchen fittings.

Several hours later, as we trudged in the midday sun along a dusty path, a bike pulled alongside.

“Where you walking to, lads?”

“Broadway.”

“Do you want to know a nice pub to stop at for lunch?”

Following the stranger’s advice, we later calculated, had added about three miles to a walk that was already, perhaps, a bit too ambitious.

The sign for The Craven Arms

The Craven Arms is a country pub in Brockhampton, one of those perfectly composed Cotswold villages where nobody actually seems to live.

“This is the kind of place Mike Oldfield has a mansion.”

“Or Mike Batt.”

The Craven Arms had better Butcombe along with North Cotswold Brewery Jumping Jack, a 3.9% summer ale.

Is it possible to give objective tasting notes after a walk?

I was hot and thirsty.

Jumping Jack was cool and wet.

I enjoyed it, insofar as I had a chance to notice it in the moment between picking up a full glass and putting down an empty one.

The beer garden was tidy and full of dogs barking at each other. Waitresses rushed around carrying food balanced on boards and slates. About half the drinkers, in designer wellies, were drinking wine.

“Shall we get going?”

We got going.


Broadway seemed to be getting further away and our conversation dwindled.

“My boots are definitely beginning to rub.”

“Which route gets us there quickest?”

“Shall we stop for another pint on the way into town?”

Snowshill had a pub, our map told us, and it would only be another hour’s walk from there, all downhill.

So we took another detour and descended through a valley full of wild garlic flowers into an even more idyllic village: red phone box, tiny church, neatly barbered village green and, yes, a lovely looking pub.

The Snowshill Arms in yellow Cotswold stone.

“What time is it?”

“Five.”

“It doesn’t open until six.”

We peered through the window.

“It looks so nice.”

Then we sat on the grass and looked at the pub for a few minutes. Perhaps if we looked sad and tired enough, the publican would take pity and open early.

“If we don’t move soon, I don’t think I’ll be able to move at all.”

We moved.


Hobbling into Broadway, tired but triumphant, we scoped out the pubs on the way. Most looked more like restaurants but The Crown & Trumpet caught our eye.

“Lots of normal people drinking there.”

An hour later, now seriously seizing up and with tender feet, we shuffled back to it like three elderly men. The five-minute walk took more like fifteen.

It was worth it, though.

The 1980s idea of the Victorian pub is a happy place for me.

It had red carpets, dark wood, brewery memorabilia all over the walls and, of course, horse brasses.

A photo of a moustachioed man smoking a big cigar. (Jimmy Edwards, I think.)

At the bar, instead of the dour indifference we’d received at The Craven Arms, we were immediately engaged in a conversation about beer.

“The North Cotswold is our bestseller at the moment. Cheltenham Gold’s off at the moment but that’ll be back on in a bit.”

While my mates ate their prawn cocktails I drank the best pint of Timothy Taylor Landlord I’d had in years.

Wait – was this the walk talking? No, I don’t think so. It was bitter, flowery, clean and clear. Blossom and fresh bread.

As night came on, our conversation became less coherent and less animated until we were all but drowsing into our pints.

“One more pint? Or a glass of whisky?”

We couldn’t. We didn’t.


The next morning, barely able to move, we gathered around the breakfast table.

“That Cheltenham Gold was so good,” said one of my pals, “that I was thinking about going back for opening time to get one more in before we leave.”

But there was no time. We had a steam train to catch.

Categories
pubs

Stumbling Upon a Gem

We went to Cheltenham to look at buildings and so did no research whatsoever into pubs and beer, but luck was on our side when we found the Sandford Park Alehouse.

After an hour or two’s nosing around, we eventually got hungry and thirsty, at which point, we saw a sign outside a plain-looking, white-painted building: CHEESE TOASTIES £4.99. ‘That’ll do,’ we said, and went in.

Immediately, our Spidey-senses began to tingle: a map of Belgium? As in the country where the beer comes from? Our first glimpse of the bar confirmed our suspicion: somehow, we had managed to stumble upon Cheltenham’s own ‘craft beer bar’.

Sandford Park Alehouse: bar.

A bright, airy, multi-room pub with décor just cosy enough to prevent it feeling sterile, enlivened considerably by maps on every wall. It reminded us, in fact, of Cask in Pimlico before it got its corporate makeover.

There was also lots of beer, though the selection wasn’t as large as at some better-known bars, and was perhaps also (thankfully?) a touch more conservative. A row of hand pumps offered cask ales from multiple Golden Pint nominees Oakham, among others. We couldn’t fault the condition of Oakham Citra or Crouch Vale Brewer’s Gold, though we wish we hadn’t drunk them in that order. (You can’t come back down the hop-ladder.)

zwicklThe real highlight was a kegged beer from Germany, via a row of taps behind the bar. Bayreuther Bierbrauerei Zwickl, at £3.90 a pint, didn’t seem exorbitantly priced (we pay £3.40+ for Doom Bar in Penzance) but we hesitated until the barman leaned over conspiratorially and said, ‘It’s served in one of these’, waving a narrow, handled ceramic mug. ‘People who like this beer really love it,’ he told us, and he was right. It was a Bavarian holiday in a jug — a little sweetness, gentle lemon-rind notes, and just enough dryness at the end to prompt another swig. It was probably (intentionally) cloudy, but we couldn’t tell, and didn’t care.

Once we’d got comfortable under a fascinating map of the Middle East, it was hard to move, and we drank one more than we had intended as we observed the crowd. The people around us were a little more middle-aged and tweedy than at the ‘craft’ places in Bristol, perhaps, but then that might just be Cheltenham. We, hurtling into middle age (though not yet into tweed), felt quite at home.

On the basis of this first visit, it felt as if the Sandford Park Alehouse might as well have been designed with us in mind, and, when we visit Cheltenham again, it will be with the specific intention of verifying that feeling with a second equally lengthy session in the same cosy corner.

The Sandford Park Alehouse is at 20 High Street, ten minutes walk from the city centre, and 30 minutes from the station.