The Isambard Kingdom Brunel (JD Wetherspoon), Landport, Portsmouth

The Isambard Kingdom Brunel is a substantial high-ceilinged long open plan Wetherspoons. I arrived just before midday on a recent Friday morning before the pub started to fill up with a lunchtime crowd. There were ten or so people standing at the long bar, but only two of the many staff were serving. This led to a wait of almost ten minutes. I later learned that a lot of customers were using the Wetherspoons app to be served at their tables, which explained why so many staff members were not actually serving people at the bar. I’m not sure I like this move to introduce table service. I counted 12 hand pumps in amongst a range of standard keg products. I opted for a pint of Fosters and a large full English, which set me back around £7.50 - excellent value for money. This pub is raised up from street level so there are steps at all entrances. However, there is a wheelchair lift and a disabled toilet on the ground floor. The other toilets are located upstairs. The wait was long and the atmosphere transient, but the prices were cheap. This is a good place to meet up before moving on somewhere else.

First time in a Portsmouth pub for 33 years: Up Pompeii! Reportedly this was created in 1996 as the Apprentice Boy from former gas board offices (built 1915 and Listed), acquired and baptised as the current ‘spoons in 2006. It is – certainly by Friday lunchtime standards – one of the quieter ‘spoons with some quite impressive interior details such as the dentil cornicing and classical capitals to the pilasters. The pub wasn’t that full but service was very slow indeed and the ale choice was about the most spartan that I’ve experienced from this chain with only around four including Doom Bar. Still, with pints costing as little as £1.99 and the minimum midnight opening (1.00 am Fri/Sat), I’ll bet it’s popular with the students.

Visited this one, as is customary on an organised Pubs Galore crawl, as the initial meet up venue to commence proceedings and it is safe to say I had low expectations of the IKB as I approached, but it was quite impressive how both the pub and its fraught serving staff limbo danced under those expectations. As others have said a fairly impressive 1915 exterior gives way to a bog standard ‘spoons interior with very little character outside of the high ceiling. As also mentioned below the ale choice was a bit thin to start with and not then helped when my first choice of Welton brews just had air and froth coming out of the pump, indicating that it had clearly gone sometime before I requested it but none of the bar staff had bothered to reverse clip it. Fortunately, something did come out of the Welton’s Horesham Pale pump and it was indeed passable at £1.99 a pint. Well, at least it meant the day could only go upwards from here…

A large and quite splendid hall, as noted earlier, with the bar running along the back wall but a pretty standard big Spoon's otherwise. The selection of ales was adequate if not especially exciting and included a couple from Weltons. The place was pretty busy but service was frankly pretty poor.