The Kings Arms Hotel, Richmond

One of the historic pubs / hotels overlooking the village green, with the benches out front having fine views across Swaledale beyond. This one still offers accommodation but is definitely a pub, though. Partly opened-out at some stage to leave the main L-shaped bar / dining area, with a small lounge zone and huge fireplace on the other side of the entrance and another dining room behind that. With two of the three handpumps in use, I found Doom Bar and Wainwright (£3.90) being poured (and a reversed Theakston Best clip on the other).

An opened out old pub generally thought to be in third place of the three pubs in Reeth as far as beer is concerned. It does have the usual plastered white walls although strangely without old photos of t'dale. It's got a nice carpet, open fires, some fake ceiling beams and traditional Yorkshire service. There is a central counter with six hand pulls but only 3 in use it being March,a mundane choice with Wainwright plus the Theakstons seasonal for March and a decidedly average Black Bull Bitter. The food wasn't bad and I guess it functions well as somewhere for tourists to spend their money as with much of Reeth.

Winner of best fire in the dales - a proper inglenook inferno. Theaskston Ales and a jukebox deliverying 50's sounds. Photos at my walking blog - http://bit.ly/1SRduGp

An impressive building, with a bit of old fashioned quality about it, though looking a little run down. The present landlord is from the north east, to judge by his strong accent, and was friendly enough. However, I am not sure how much he knows about keeping real ales. There were six beers among nine hand pumps at the time of our off-season midweek visit. All were from Theakstons except Thwaites Wainwright, and the two we tried were cloudy and tasted rather old. As well as Old Peculier and Infallible, there were Lightfoot, Black Bull and Best Bitter, three almost indistinguishable and bland pale beers - very similar to Thwaites Wainwright. Serving this large a range at this time of year is asking for trouble, it seems to me, and a more sensible offering would have been just one or at most two of those pale beers together with the two darker ones.