The Bacon Arms, Newbury

The Bacon Arms is a hotel and bar with accommodation upstairs and out the back opposite a part covered patio full of seating. To the right of the front entrance is a room with a dartboard and pool table where a large television hags on the rear wall above a fireplace. The bar area is found to the left where seating runs under the front windows and there’s a fireplace on the rear wall to the right of the L-shaped serving counter that runs across the rear wall to the left where is carries on towards the rear and another fireplace. Up the laminate floored left-hand side is split-level seating that runs to a raised dart area at the rear, where there are two dartboards on the wall at very different heights, photo uploaded. Standard and premium keg was available alongside Neck Oil and I counted three hand pumps, one of which was drawing Wainwright. I found the service to be friendly, but the pub was devoid of any kind of atmosphere, much like most hotel bars.

This is what amounts to little more than a hotel bar albeit reasonably sized. Three handpumps on the bar with only Pedigree available in the cask stakes, a beer I historically have never liked but went with a half which to be fair was kept rather well but the beer itself bareley distinguishable from any other Marstons spawned brown beer. Not my kind of place but a ticks a tick.

A long thin hotel bar ranged across the whole front of the building. Entering front the street there is a vestibule with seating then to the left the bar proper with tables and chairs then moving deeper there is the counter to the right and a vertical drinking area to the left, further on is some bench seating. The hotel is owned by Marstons so not unnaturally the beers are from them , Ringwood and Jennings with a Pedigree clip reversed on the three hand pumps, fairly average in taste as well. There is a large dining room beyond the bar at the back of the hotel.