Great Western Hotel, Exeter

I had intended to visit this large hotel bar outside St David's Station upon my initial arrival in the city, only to find a handwritten sign on the front door exclaiming that they were temporarily shut, but returning a couple of days later, they were thankfully open and I was able to finally pop in and enjoy a drink in their comfortable front bar. You enter via the hotel reception, passing into the ‘Loco Bar’ - an L shaped, bare boarded space with the bar over on the rear right wall. The place has been kitted out with the kind of higher end furniture you might expect from a hotel bar, including smart comfy chairs serving small tables in the space opposite the bar, plush armchairs in a small carpeted space in front of a nice fireplace, and some well upholstered banquettes to the front left. On the fringes, a small drinking ledge to rear left offers high padded stools and from here, the room extends to the left where a couple more tables and chairs can be found. The walls are painted in neutral colours and decorated with mirrors, including one very grand one to front left, a few bits of breweriana and some old photos. A TV projector on the ceiling suggests sport may be shown on a furled screen above the front windows, although I didn’t see any promotional material to confirm this. The bar has a nice wood panel counter and attractive matching canopy with a clock mounted on top, all fronting an angular mirrored bar back. Steps down to the left of the bar lead into a compact rear lounge with nice button backed banquettes and similar decor. This place has made it into recent editions of the Good Beer Guide and offered one of the wider ale selections I encountered in Exeter, consisting of Dartmoor Jail and Dragons Breath, Exeter Avocet and Darkness, Pitchfork Golden Ale and Quainton QPA. I got a friendly welcome from the barman, who poured me a good drop of the QPA, which I drank in the comfy chairs next to the bar whilst enjoying the antics of a rather amusing couple who were having a big, albeit mainly whispered, tiff, in an otherwise silent room! This place treads the line between pub and hotel bar reasonably well, coming out just about on the right side, enabling customers to enjoy a session here working their way through the decent selection of beers on offer. This was a successful visit and the pub makes a good, if rather unlikely, double header with the outstanding Wertherspoons a short way up the hill from here.