The Cherry Tree (JD Wetherspoon), Huddersfield

A Wetherspoons housed in a nasty 60's building (apparently a converted furniture showroom). Nonetheless it has a great reputation for ale and there were eight (yes, eight) guest ales available. Care is taken to locate the three 'heavies' (and there were three over 5% when I called) in their own section at the back end of the bar; the five lower abv's line up at the front entrance. My Dent Ow’d Tup and Moorhouse Witches were both in excellent shape. The interior is nothing to write home about though I suppose they had sod-all to work with anyway, though as PSM says below, two sides have a lot of large windows which allow for plenty of natural light. Extremely busy, even by spoons standards, for a Thursday lunchtime. Punters were also less of a Spoons stereotype than usual. I suppose one area of criticism is that they had completely run out of ketchup! This is a JDW that an ale drinker should definitely make a beeline for, shame that it isn't more characterful. I left impressed.

This is quite a smart Wetherspoons pub, closer in style to a Lloyds No 1 bar than many of the other pubs in this particular chain, located on the ground floor of a rather drab looking building a short walk from the town's train station. The interior is quite light and open with plenty of seating throughout, including a raised section to the rear of the room which incorporates a couple of booths and a downstairs area which can be used for private hire. Two sides of the pub have large windows which keep the main seating area light and offer punters the chance to idly sit and watch the world go by. There were a few TV screens on showing muted 24 hour news coverage and the pub was surprisingly busy when I turned up at around 11:30 on a weekday morning. There were ten handpulls on the bar, of which six or seven had guest ales on, whilst the remainder offered 'Spoons regulars such as Ruddles. I tried the Wharfebank Maypole Mild and found it was kept in pretty good shape. I did however, have quite a shock when the barman insisted that I show him some ID before he would serve me - a good 14 years too late to catch me out for underage drinking. Anyway, aside from such dubious flattery, this is a decent enough 'Spoons, but given that it's in a town with more than its fair share of excellent pubs, I'm not sure I'd recommend it other than as part of an extended crawl.