The Salisbury, Manchester

Characterful pub outside Oxford Road station, you can see where different rooms have been broken into one- this must have been a beautiful interior in its day. Decor was all rock music posters from where I was sat. the atmosphere on a Friday afternoon consisted of very noisy chatter and decent music at a reasonable volume. 5 ales from the Heineken approved range (Boltmaker, Landlord, Old Peculier, Plum Porter and Theakston Summit), plus a real cider. Card only but a good pub, worth a visit.

The Salisbury Ale House has long been on my shopping list of pubs to visit in Manchester city centre. It was last in the Good Beer Guide in 2016, until it recently made it in again for the 2022 edition. As this was the last remaining city centre pub for me to visit in the latest GBG, I'd intentionally hung around the Oxford Road area throughout the morning awaiting its midday opening time. However, we arrived shortly after midday to find all of the doors still firmly locked shut. Not a good start. After visiting the Thirsty Scholar nextdoor, we returned to find a fairly traditional pub with plenty of wood and tiling. However, with the fairly bog standard ale range, I'm surprised it made it back into the GBG. Trooper & Old Peculier are the regular beers, with the guest beer being Razor Back. All are beers that you'd often see wandering through Manchester, with nothing adventurous to tempt me. Apparently a CAMRA discount is available, but this neither advertised nor offered. Whilst my Old Peculier was in good condition, I wouldn't go out of my way to pay this pub a return visit. However, it's location next to Oxford Road station may lead me to pop in at some point in the future.

Open for business. Separate entrance and exit doors. I was greeted on entry and advised to find a seat. My order was then taken and paid for by card (no cash accepted). Only two cask ales on - Theakston Old Peculiar and Butcombe Original Bitter, the latter of which was not actually clipped. Your details are registered by scanning a QR code, though this is not policed. This is not normally a particularly exciting pub for real ale and is even less so at the moment, but it is handy for Oxford Road station.

Slightly tucked-away off the Oxford Road but close to the station entrance. Quite a bold, attractive façade, and the partially opened-out interior doesn't disappoint either. Traditional furniture and decor in a number of small seating areas scattered around the bar, and a pool table can be found in a corner room. Decent range of real ales in a variety of styles from six of eight handpumps, and the Caledonian Cold Comfort was in fine form.

One of 3 just down the steps of Oxford Rd station and the best of the 3. Several real ales available. A few posters of bands dotted around the walls and the background music today was very rock orientated. A good place to start if you're making your way down from the station to the Uni for a gig.

A good sized, traditional pub just off the Oxford Road and immediately adjacent to the train station, it’s one of those places that you could easily miss if you didn’t know it was there, which be a shame as it’s actually a very nice pub. It’s basically all one single room, although it has been split in to several areas with wood partitioning, some of which included etched glass. Decor wise it’s quite traditional with a red ceiling and cream and terracotta tiling in front of the bar. A wood burning stove was in one corner but this was not in use. A plasma at the end of the bar was showing a subtitled film, but the volume was off so it was not intrusive, and neither were the other smaller TV’s around. Not something I normally like in a pub, but somehow here they fitted in quite unobtrusively. Flooring was a mixture of black tiling and dark laminate. Beers on tap were Tighthead stout, Robinson’s Old Trooper, Deuchars IPA, Old Peculiar and Theakston’s Lightfoot. A further three pumps were not in use suggesting that there may on occasions be more than this. The barman was friendly and helpful, explaining the different choices in some detail and even offering to bring a taster over to my table. After such an enthusiastically presented beer selection, it was particularly disappointing that the only cider was Strongbow, of both the original and dark fruit varieties. How can a pub that seems to pay so much attention to it’s beer go so woefully wrong with the cider?