Jacksons Arms, Hartlepool

I am sorry but one undrinkable beer in a cask marque pub didn't work for us today. Lovely old pub but one cask beer on and we had to leave it. Very poor

I called in here on the recommendations of some of my Luton Town drinking mates, on the basis of its inclusion in the Good Beer Guide. It was ok, but nothing special on the beer front. They had a hand-written pump clip for Monument Bitter, but the landlord was unable to say where it came from. To be fair he tried looking it up in the GBG - two possibilities, neither of which turned out to be the right one - I have since Googled it and it turns out to be from Tyne Bank brewery. This is a pleasant, unpretentious street corner local, handily placed if you've a few minutes to kill before catching a train out of Hartlepool (though not as handy as the Rat Race, obviously).

The Jacksons Arms is a pleasant, traditional back street boozer, close to the town’s train and bus stations. The Cleveland CAMRA website notes that a novel approach to selling the pub resulted in it being put up as a prize in a raffle, with tickets costing £100 each. It certainly wouldn’t be a bad prize to win, with the building retaining a traditional two room interior. To the left of the entrance is the lounge – a smart room with red banquettes around the perimeter, some floral carpeting and patterned wallpaper. The servery is in dark wood with a stained glass hood over it and the room is decorated with various items of interest including a beer bottle collection, displays of knots, brewery mirrors and a TV screen which was switched off on my Tuesday night visit. To the right of the main entrance is the public bar which also looked quite nicely appointed with less seating, some semi partitioning screens with stained glass insets and the obligatory pool table and dartboard. The pub has been a Good Beer Guide regular in recent years, supposedly getting through over 100 different beers each year across its four hand pulls, mostly from microbreweries nationwide. It therefore came as something of a disappointment to find just two ales on the bar, both fairly mainstream offerings of Wychwood Hobgoblin (£3.00) and Shepherd Neame Spitfire. The Hobgoblin was okay and the barmaid was friendly enough, but sadly the pub was practically empty, with just two others in the lounge and a couple more throwing some arrows in the other room. Clearly, a late Tuesday night visit on a freezing winter’s evening wasn’t the time to catch this place at its best. It’s the sort of pub I can imagine it’s nice to settle down in for an evening, but I’d hoped for a better ale choice to go with it. I’d give this place another try and hope for better luck on the beer front next time.