Axe & Compass, Leighton Buzzard

Two-bar village pub with a couple of local cask ales. We entered this pub from the car park to the rear to find the rear room full with some kind of private party going on. Walking towards the toilets at the side of the pub, where there is also another entrance door, we managed to access the front room. The front room is a carpeted affair which was also quite busy early on a Saturday evening. Seating was very limited. The ale choice was XT 4 or Tring Blockbuster. As I'd worked my way through a number of Tring beers throughout the day, I tried the Blockbuster. It wasn't my kind of beer at all, but there was nothing wrong with the conditioning. 11 years on since Blackthorn's review below, there was no real cider. Another Bedfordshire pub I struggled to get comfortable in, probably because it felt too busy. Perhaps on a quieter weekday, it would be much more appealing?

A good sized pub on the main road through the village, it consists of a good sized car park with a small accommodation block off of it, a beer garden with good views of the adjacent countryside and a patio area at the rear. The rear bar is what might be described as the public bar and seemed a popular spot with locals on a recent Tuesday evening visit. The flooring was a mixture of strip wood and some grey, slate like tiles whilst the walls had wood panelling on the lower part and some lime green, floral wallpaper up above. There was a plasma on one wall as well as a pool table, darts board and a small trophy shelf. The lounge bar at the front of the pub had similar décor but with a straw colour carpet on the floor, some black beams on the ceiling and pale lemon paintwork on the walls. There were a few small pictures dotted around such as artistic drawings of food and drink and a few old black and white photos of the locale. The menu offered a decent looking selection of pub grub dishes, with option such a Ham Egg & Chips, Fish & Chips, Steak and a Stilton Chicken Breast as well as a few burgers, baguettes and homemade pies. Most of the main courses were in the £8 - £9 range. My Chicken Tikka Masala initially looked promising with a generous portion of chicken and sauce on a bed of rice with an accompanying mini naan bread. However, the sauce wasn’t particularly tasty and the chicken had that curious rubbery quality that you sometimes find in cheap Chinese takeaways. The menu listed it at £8.25, but apparently they have a “50% off” deal Mondays to Fridays so it only cost me £4.47 (although eagle eyed readers will note that this is actually only about 46% off) so at these prices it would be churlish to complain. Offering half price food virtually all the time though does of course mean that in reality that’s all it’s worth and one might feel slightly aggrieved at paying the “normal” price on a weekend. There were a good selection of beers on tap, although it would appear that they were running a beer festival on the occasion of my visit, so it may not always be this extensive. There were three hand pumps on the bar suggesting that this may be the usual number and a further three barrels sat on the end of the bar. A blackboard listed the options as Potton’s Phoenix and Lion IPA, Tring’s Phantom Monk, Vale’s Red Kite, Kite’s Scary Kite and Caledonian’s Autumn Red. The only cider on tap was Strongbow, although these were joined by boxes of Weston’s Country Perry and Family Reserve. Hopefully the latter are permanent fixtures and not part of the beer festival.

Heath and Reach is a small village near the Chiltern Hills in Bedfordshire, about two miles north of Leighton Buzzard and three miles south of Woburn. It used to boast five pubs back in the day, but the Red Lion has been turned into flats, the Dukes Head into an Indian restaurant and The Cock Horse into a hotel. The Axe and Compass is one that remains, and is a fairly unremarkable village inn which retains a two room set up either side of a central serving bar. The larger Public bar is dominated by a central pool table, two large plazmas running music videos, a dart board and several fruit machines and has a well worn feel and seating that has certainly seen some life. There were quite a few locals in on this early Monday evening, which as always a good sign. It opens out onto a small patio area with seating which seems to be mainly utilised by smokers and beyond this is a decent garden section with kids play area. The smaller front Lounge / Dining room is smarter and mainly laid to tables for eating. The food menu is honest pub grub fare at reasonable prices and there is a good range of home made pies at around the £7 mark. Standard drinks offering with the usual chrome pumps. But at least there are three hand pumps although alarmingly for my visit these were dominated by the poor imitation that masquerades as Courage Best and Directors nowadays. Fortunately there does seem to be guest ales from the Concrete Cow microbrewery in Milton Keynes and the Courage Best pump was reverse clipped and a acme style homemade clip in crayon announced the availability of Watling gold, which was a decent pint and probably justified the petrol spent taking the detour from the nearby A5. So in conclusion, a solid, although largely unremarkable village pub and I would have no problem with it being my local if I lived in the village. But I don’t so I can’t see myself rushing back.

Official site of the Axe & Compass, contains menu and event details - www.theaxeandcompass.co.uk

Official site of the Axe & Compass, contains menu and event details - www.theaxeandcompass.co.uk