The Froddington Arms, Fratton, Portsmouth

On entering from the street corner door I saw no handpumps along the length of the bar however perseverance pays and around the far corner was a welcome sight of a bank of five, Doom Bar, Spitfire, Bishop's Finger, Whitstable Bay Pale Ale plus Old Rosie cider. The WB was a good value £3.00 which compared rather well with the £5.10 I was mugged for in The Wave Maiden earlier, albeit for a different beer. The pub wraps around in a kind of U shape with the bar the central feature. One return had a pool table, the other a dartboard. Carpeted apart from the pool area, banquette and chair seating with a couple of booths in front of the bar divided by modern coloured glass screens. The TV had just finished showing the Tyne/Wear derby and rather loud rock music was blaring out, much to the entertainment of a small group of 60something blokes who had clearly been on the sauce all day. The pub was rather boisterous but good humoured. Décor included an old "Public Bar" etched glass panel, framed, a few PFC team pictures and pennants and the bar front is partly painted a particularly garish shade of purple. The presence of lighting and speakers indicate that live music must be on the menu. No indications of food, talking of menus, but it was Easter Sunday tea time. Not a bad spot overall, if a bit loud, a reasonable ale range well priced, even more so if you use the loyalty scheme, buy 9 get the 10th free.

A traditional Victorian corner pub in a dense residential area, very much a thriving, welcoming local. The ground floor has been converted into a single L-shaped bar with separate bar counters at each leg. There is a pool table at one end accompanied by a dart board and gaming machines. There are tv screens which were showing live football with no sound, but even if there was sound, it would have been drowned out by the truly awful racket coming from the jukebox. The bar staff were very welcoming, maybe because we were several decades younger than most of the coffin-dodging regulars who may have been responsible for the strange smell which we originally thought was a faulty toilet. There were 5 handpumps, two of which had reversed clips, 2 appeared redundant and the last of which was dispensing Brains's Bread of Heaven. The beer was in very good condition, and the barmaid seemed to know what she was doing with her ales. They run a meat raffle and karaoke – an odd combination – every Friday. I would include on a crawl for its beer quality alone