The Oak, Aylesbury

Attractive Fuller's pub with a thatched roof and a leafy beer garden. Retains two main rooms inside, with a plainly furnished bar and a larger, more comfortable lounge with the dining areas beyond. London Pride, an excellent seasonal Golden Rays (£5.00) and Dark Star's Not Into Yoga available from a bank of four handpumps on each counter.

Pub number 8 in Buckinghamshire and this was our 3rd Fuller's pub. As with the previous 2, the ale choice was limited to Pride & Seafarers. The interior was nice, but our visit was spoiled by the strange Covid and inconsistent Covid measures that were in place. On heading to the bar to see what was on, we were reprimanded for not wearing masks. Where the rest of the country has made it optional (including other Fuller's pubs), here it is still mandatory when walking around the pub. Service was also table service. We took a seat and waited for service, while staff wandered around doing odd jobs and ignored us and other people managed to get served at the bar, some without face masks! We eventually managed to shout across to the bar to place our order and we were invited to go up to the bar to collect our order and pay for it, assuming I donned a face mask. What a palaver and a complete waste of everybody's time. Nice looking pub with completely chaotic and disorganised service from the young staff spoiling our visit.

A very attractive, thatched pub in this pleasant village, it’s not going to get much in the way of passing trade being tucked away from the main road, but it’s clearly well-known and was extremely busy on our recent Saturday afternoon visit. Internally, the pub consists of two original rooms with a more modern conservatory extension to the rear. The public bar was off to the left and whilst not unpleasant, it didn’t really have too much in the way of character. There was a wood strip floor with quarry tiles around the bar counter, and a TV mounted on the wall at one end. Fortunately the volume was off so this was not too intrusive. The larger lounge bar to the right is all together much more appealing and “olde worlde” with a low beamed ceiling, flagstone floor, a very large stone fireplace with an open grate and wooden pews for the seating. Some wood partitioning with leaded glass inserts broke up the space a little. The downside of this was that it was packed to capacity with diners, about half of whom seemed to be small children. Consequently the noise level was very high, and it was really impossible to spend any length of time here, not that there was anywhere to sit anyway. Fortunately it was a very pleasant day, so we decamped to the garden. The conservatory at the rear was a little more contemporary with dark wood laminate on the floor and this led out in to the garden. This was a good size and also included a large marquee, although this was not in use on our visit. Presumably they hold functions of some sort here. Beers on tap were Liberation Ale, Oliver’s Island, London Pride and Lacons Encore. The solitary cider meanwhile was Cornish Orchards. This is a tricky one to mark. On one hand it’s just my sort of pub with it’s cosy old charm and I can well imagine settling down in front of the fire on a cold winter’s day for a good session. On the other hand, the clientele on my visit completely spoilt any chance of a quiet and relaxing pint, so based on that I’m going to have to knock a couple of points off.

Official site of The Oak - www.theoakastonclinton.net