The Three Horseshoes, Duton Hill, Great Dunmow

The Three Horseshoes was one of those pubs where the curtains were twitching as I arrived into the car park. I entered into a fairly busy pub, but with nobody behind the bar. A group of bar hoggers were sat along the length of the bar meaning I had to stand a fair distance from the bar to await service. I waited and waited until one of the bar hoggers became aware of my presence and turned around to tell me to call the barmaid over. Not even knowing who the barmaid was, I looked in the general direction he was pointing and made eye contact with the barmaid who was chatting with the woman who had been watching me entering the car park. Eventually, instead of going behind the bar to serve me, the barmaid approached me to ask "can I help you?", to which I replied "yes please - I'd like a drink if possible". Whether she expected me to be a delivery driver, a salesman, a debt collector or something similar, I'm not entirely sure. Maybe they are not used to seeing strangers here. Either way, the welcome felt more like being challenged than anything else. After this off-putting experience, I chose between the 2 real ales (Mighty Oak Jake The Snake & Shalford Draught Horse) and sank (almost literally) into a sofa-like seat in one corner. Locals continued to arrive and congregate around the bar, whilst the barmaid and her twitcher friends remained at the far end of the pub, their daughters playing pool at the other end. I did notice though that locals got served considerably quicker than I did. There's plenty to admire around the walls and ceilings, not least a collection of postcards and tankards above the bar, Guinness items in another corner and all sorts of other cabinets and displays. Being Essex, locals tend to use some quite fruity language which might offend some, despite the obvious presence of children. This was a pub that I would normally enjoy visiting, but the obvious customer service failures here would deter me from a further visit. It's clearly a locals pub only meant for locals, which makes it all the stranger that it appears in the Good Beer Guide. God knows what sort of reception the local CAMRA bods get when they arrive.