Britannia Inn, Ambleside

I always call at the Britannia if I'm staying in or passing through this part of the Lake District. Cask beers are now £5.50 a pint, with a reduction to £5.20 for Camra members if you feel like brandishing a membership card. They have been brewing their own beers here - they're styled as Langdale brewery - for a while now; they appear on a couple of other bars in the valley, but I remain unimpressed. Recent winter visits have found the cask beers generally below standard, but this is probably inevitable when the same number of different beers appears on the bar all year round. What does remain impressive is the service and the friendliness of the staff - a couple of visits during the Covid restrictions saw them coping very well, with a quick temperature check on entry, perspex screens across the tables to allow sharing, and a block of wood painted in different colours at each end to signal whether service was required. (Those were the days.)

On my most recent visit I was shocked to be charged £4.80 for a pint of Jennings Sneck Lifter. All the other beers on the bar were £3.70, and although Sneck Lifter is stronger than average at 5.1% it's not a barley wine or an imperial stout. Another irritation on this visit was people making love to other people's dogs. I know dog lovers think this is normal behaviour, but to the rest of us humans it looks like something you shouldn't be doing in public. Apart from that, I had a lovely time. Please see review below from five years ago for something more positive.