The Two Brewers, Marlow

An attractive and traditional looking pub, tucked away in the back streets but only a short stroll from both the High Street and the river, it consists of one quite long main bar as well as a couple of smaller rooms off to the side. One of these was up a few stairs to the right and was signposted as “River View”, although in practice to have any chance of seeing a bit of water you would have to have craned you head sideways out of the bay window and peered down to the end of the street. Décor wise it’s quite traditional with rough wooden boards on the floor and a low ceiling with plenty of black beams as well as more black timberwork including the door frames and so on and also black wood panelling on the lower part of the walls. A tiny brick fireplace was off to one side, whilst there were a few old black and white photographs of the locale on the walls and a couple of shelves with a collection of jugs, tankards and so on. A separate room down a few steps to the right had the something of a cellar like appearance with a brick vaulted ceiling. A TV was stuck up on the wall, but fortunately this was not in use on our visit. Disappointingly, despite five hand pumps on the bar, two appeared unused and three had their labels reversed, so there was actually no real ale available on this occasion. I could see that one of these was London pride, but could not see the others. Hopefully this was just a blip, although being relatively early on a Friday evening, it doesn’t bode well for the weekend. The solitary cider meanwhile was Symonds Founders Reserve. Overall despite the lack of any beer and poor cider selection, I quite liked this pub and would give it another chance if in the area.

Good looking old building in a charming side street ,not far from the station and a stones throw from the banks of the Thames.There is a large courtyard as you enter,and a noticeably low ceiling around the bar,with lots of exposed timbers and much character.To the left is a dining area,all tables set and looking quite classy but not busy.Back from the bar,there is an oblong section below an external window with some long bench seating,around a small traditional fireplace and this is the place to sit and drink inside if you dont want to be vertical infront of the bar.As the evening wore on ,and the ale flowed we decided to eat in here and were able to do so without having to decamp to the restaurant,the food was decent but not exceptional with premium pricing not fully justified.Charming barmaid was a distict positive. At the bar there were 5 handpumps with London Pride,GK IPA and three from Rebellion namely IPA,Smugglers and a very good Blonde which on a sweaty evening proved a perfect pint and caused this to be a one stop pub crawl as we couldn't imagine finding anything better elsewhere in Marlow,a town not noted for top quality real ale. Maybe we just got lucky,but as long as they stock the more interesting brews from Rebellion ,I would be happy to pop in for a pint or four !

An aged building in a picturesque street and close to the waterfront (the street basically peters out and disappears beneath the waves), this place re-opened a while back after a catastrophic fire. Whilst the T-shaped interior has a bit of character (old black beams, wooden settles etc), it’s really more restaurant than pub in terms of operation. However there were five ales on; 3x Rebellion, GK IPA and London Pride – fairly unimaginative, really. Tried two in here, a flatlining (end of barrel, probably) Rebellion IPA and a fresh-on (and much nicer) Zebedee. It’s worth a look-in certainly but was less impressive than expected. 6.5