The Festival, Edinburgh

Official site of The Festival - www.belhavenpubs.co.uk

Official site of The Festival - www.belhavenpubs.co.uk

Just off the main drag 1 real ale.

An attractive looking pub just down the road from Haymarket station, it has a blue painted façade, arched windows and some outside seating on the small terrace and all together looks quite an inviting spot to pop in. There is apparently also a courtyard garden at the rear, although this was locked and inaccessible on our visit which was a bit of a shame as the terrace at the front doesn’t have the best outlook being on quite a busy road and opposite a building covered in scaffolding. Internally it’s also very pleasant and almost has something of a country pub feel to it with stripped wooden boards on the floor and some areas of exposed stone walling, although perhaps the deep blue paint covering every other available surface including the walls, wooden cladding on the lower part of the walls, ceiling, cornicework and even the tops of some of the tables and the ends of the padded bench seating got a bit much. Seating was a mixture of the aforementioned padded benches, regular chairs and padded stools. A TV screen in a room off to the right was showing a football match, but fortunately the volume was off so this was not too intrusive. A selection of small keg cans were piled on a shelf suggesting perhaps that these are available to take away, and although the tables were laid up with cutlery and cruet sets, this didn’t strike me as a food led pub and there was no one eating on our lunchtime visit. The solitary beer on tap was Greene King IPA which was a little disappointing, although there were two further pumps on the bar so perhaps there is more choice on occasions. There were also a couple of keg options including Harviestoun Neck Oil. The solitary cider meanwhile was again a rather disappointing Aspall’s Suffolk.