The Black Bear, Wareham

Just a short walk from the station this is a smart two room pub, formerly run by Hall & Woodhouse, but now mercifully operating free of tie. Entering to the front room, you find yourself in a carpeted main bar area with the servery to the rear and some basic seating options around the perimeter, including some tables that had lost their battle with a tide of encroaching Christmas decorations. The room seems to have been given a fairly recent makeover, with plain newly painted walls, decent carpet and some typical pub décor including paintings, black and white photos and a good pump clip collection, although the curtains in the front windows were very old-fashioned and quite incongruous compared to the rest of the room. The bar has a plain counter front and simple mirrored bar back, also suggestive of a refit at some point. A door to one side of the bar leads you through to a smaller rear dining room, also carpeted and with grey low wood panelling beneath an off-white upper section. Simple table and chair formations fill much of the space, ideal for anyone wanting to eat, and there’s a decent brick fireplace on the rear wall with a modern surround. The walls have been decorated with landscape photos, mirrors and clocks, plus a specials board to complement the classic pub grub menu. A nice stained glass rose pattern screen partitions the area from what was presumably once the servery for this room, but now appears to be the space where hot drinks are prepared. Out the front there’s a small shelter for smokers and a couple of seats in front of the small layby-style car park. Since becoming a freehouse, the ale range has improved significantly, as evidenced by the aforementioned pump clip collection. On our visit, there were three handpulls in operation, dispensing Langport Bitter, Flack Manor Double Drop and Robinsons Mr Scrooge. A friendly old school landlord served up a pint of the Bitter, which I thought was in good shape and a huge improvement on the uninspiring Badger beers that used to be the order of the day here. This is a popular local’s pub that offers a warm welcome to strange faces and serves up some well-kept beer, making it a bit of a no brainer to check out if you find yourself in Wool. The refurb has seen the pub lose a bit of its character, but it remains an unpretentious pub and restaurant and I’m very happy that I made the effort to check it out.

A former coaching inn and later on a hotel, on the outskirts of Wool, this pub is now a freehouse which serves its locals well and is noted for its ale quality. A single large L-shaped bar bar forms the ground floor, while outside is a garden with one side marked off as a no smoking area. The pub stands in its own grounds and has a reasonable car park. In the bar is a selection of seating styles, and there is a gaming machine. The staff were very friendly, offering treats for the dogs, while the locals were civilised. They have an active pub cricket team and host a lot of fund raising and social events. Tasters of the beers were offered, the beers being Flack Manor's Flack Bear (the house ale), Old Nutty Hen and Betty Brown's Moonlight. All were in excellent condition and most enjoyable. This is one of the better pubs in the area, worth stopping off for its beer quality alone and well deserving of its recent award from CAMRA as Pub of the Season 2016.

A perfectly situated venue in the countryside of Wool, Dorset. great Homemade food & Traditional Ales. A must visit.