The Boat Inn, Towcester

This seems to be very much a pub of two halves. At the back are a couple of great old snugs, with a frontage that is right on the canal. At the front is a much more open, contemporary lounge with perhaps slightly less appeal for the traditional pub aficionado. The entrance way from the front car park is unusual in that you first enter in to a sort of hallway with a couple of sofas, but little in the way of character. It’s difficult to imagine anybody sitting there and having a pint. To the left, is a large open room with a modern looking wood vaulted ceiling, a wood strip floor and a stone built bar counter that has a couple of large wooden ship’s keels built in to it. Decor wise there is wood panelling on the lower part of the walls with cream paintwork above, a few pictures of the canal and other nautical scenes and a mixture of tables, chairs and a few cosy looking low leather sofa’s. A fruit machine was in the corner and a plasma was stuck on the wall which perhaps seemed a little out of place, but the only thing that it was showing was a message saying “no input signal”. Beyond this is another room with exposed stone walls that looks as though it may be more geared up for dining, although there was another room beyond this again marked up as a restaurant. The real character of the pub is undoubtedly at the back. Besides the pleasant outlook on to the canal (as opposed to the car park) the popular and cosy snug was bursting at the seams on a recent early Wednesday evening, whereas the front bar was deserted. It has an old flagstone floor, real fire and wood backed pews around the perimeter. This is a really small room, and was full to capacity with only a dozen or so people in there. These were a mix of friendly locals and boaters who all seemed to mingling and chatting amiably. Beyond this is another small room with a red tiled floor and next to this something that I initially took to be a skittle alley, but then found that it was only about eight foot long. There was some sort of table skittles game at one end, and a sign saying something about under arm shots. Clearly skittles in these parts is very different to what I’m used to at home. Food was a bit of a mixed bag. The menu looked to be a decent enough selection of pub grub, with a good choice of burgers, as well as jackets and a (very) small specials board. Most of the mains were around the £8-£9 mark, and whilst my chicken breast with bacon, caramelised onions and goat’s cheese had some interesting flavours, the chicken was somewhat tough and stringy. Similarly, desert which was a concoction of ice cream, caramel sauce, mars bar pieces, chocolate buttons and cream was ok but had a somewhat artificial taste to it. There was a good selection of beers on tap with Banks Bitter, Pedigree, EPA, Frog Island, Marstons Old Empire, Hobgoblin and Jennings Cumberland. Ciders were also well represented with Scrumpy Jack, Strongbow and Thatcher’s Heritage. In spite of a slight disappointment on the food front, this is still a cracking pub and in a completely different league to the other one in the village and I would happily return.

Official site of the Boat Inn, contains menus - www.boatinn.co.uk

Official site of the Boat Inn, contains menus - www.boatinn.co.uk