The Bear, Bedford

The Bear had slightly odd opening hours on New Year's Day. Whilst most pubs in Bedfordshire were open during the day and closing early evening, this one was not opening up until 6pm. As such, we left it until last having been glad that we'd phoned ahead with all of them! It's a fairly basic town boozer with a small room at the front and a larger room stretching a fair way back at the rear. The pub has a fairly gothic feel to it. At first I thought that the Halloween decorations had been left up, but I suspect it looks like this all year round, with plenty of skulls and skeletons on the ceiling and on high shelves. 3 real ales were on - Brakspear Gravity, Hardy & Hanson's Rockin' Rudolph (at least some sort of nod towards Christmas here) & Fuller's London Pride. My Brakspear was surprisingly enjoyable. With a friendly barmaid also in attendance, I certainly wouldn't dismiss this on any future crawl of Bedford's pubs. Although there are undoubtedly better pubs in the town.

An odd layout here with a very long bar area and a room at the front with large, glass, shop like windows. The place was virtually deserted on our midweek visit and I can only assume that it makes hay at the weekends. Just the two beers on - B&T Shefford Bitter and a very decent Tring Tea Kettle Stout. Worth a look to see what they have on.

On the main drag,the side door is stiff and opens onto a glazed corridor with an even stiffer door to enter the bar room.This is long and thin,with the bar running most of the length of the left side,while traditional tables run along the other wall with some good original feature frieze windows giving much needed light.There is wood panelling ,while the room opens out at the end.There is an unusual front room that looks over the street.It's devoid of much furniture,carpeted but with a small book library.I suspect this may have been a disco area in a past life,it just serves as a non descript overflow area these days. The are 4 handpumps ,but only two working on my Tuesday evening visit serving B&T Shefford Bitter and Tring Tea Kettle Stout (decent nick) .This pub has just got in the 2019 GBG ,so the lack of range was disappointing,maybe more ale arrives later in the week. Aimed at a younger crowd,good muzak was playing quite loud but apparently the young drinkers section of the local CAMRA have voted this their pub of the year so it's worth a glance if you are crawling around town.