The Free Trade, Berwick-Upon-Tweed

An award winning listed pub with very limited opening hours, after 7pm Monday, Thursday and Friday, from noon at the weekend. Pretty much unspoiled with a very woody interior and a head height partition with a door leading into the main front bar. This has an L shaped counter with a narrow area with bench opposite and a larger space mostly taken up by darts and some banquette seating round the edge. Very nice stained glass front windows in the style of the 1910 refit of the pub. Three pulls but just the one working with an average Hadrian & Border Tyneside Blonde, two trio T-Bars have a range of usual suspects. As a sop to modernity there’s a big screen and the decor is mostly from home nation flags on the ceiling. At the back is a plainer sitting room then apparently another with a pool table, but I didn’t look. The trough in the gents is filled with coins.

A CAMRA Inventory pub of National Importance (unaltered since 1910) and well-worth it's place. On entering there’s an entry corridor fashioned from head-height wood partitions with a dropped entrance to the main bar. This is a small and simple affair with tongue and groove wood panelling and blue lino. Pool room to the rear, which is much less interesting. A darts match was in full swing on my visit meaning I had to find myself a space at the servery (not that there really was any). Three pumps with a turned clip so a nasty sweet keg Belhaven Best had to do. Well-worth dropping in for a nose but beware that opening hours are really sporadic, indeed the only time I saw it open during my four days in Berwick was the Monday night!