Wellington Arms, Freemantle, Southampton

The Wellington is a busy back streets local offering 6 ales in the public bar, with folk regularly coming and going. My 2 (different) pints from Flacks were unfortunately nothing to shout about. It seems that Neck Oil has recently been added to the keg taps, to some astonishment at the £5.40 price, though ales are more reasonably priced at around £4. The main road through Shirley is pretty grim, and this pub benefits from being somewhat out of the way, but it turned out to be not really the beer destination I'd expected.

A great little local in the back streets noted for its music and beer range. Retaining a two bar layout, it has been refurbished in a slightly dark green colour scheme but retains a warm, comfortable feel. An excellent range of beers is available from a dozen or so pumps, plus a few boxed ciders in the chiller. Do not include this pub on a crawl or you may not get past it!

A wonderfully traditional backstreet corner pub with its fair share of quirkiness as Quinno mentions. 11 handpumps all clipped up on my visit, though I only tried the one, Dark Star Sunburst at a very reasonable £3,28 a pint, other beers were Flack Manor Double Drop,Palmers Tally Ho, Dark Star Hophead and American Pale Ale, Andwells Gold Muddler,Triple fff Alton's Pride and Forbidden Fruit, XT13,Fullers London Pride and ESB.An Impressive line up for a relativly small pub, the quality of the one beer I tried was excellent.