The Royal Oak, Alton

A long main room as you enter with an eating area to one end and a loungey area at the other end. Seven pumps in total were dispensing Itchen valley Hampshire Rose,Dark Star Hophead, Hogs Back TEA.Flowerpots Bitter,Triple fff Moondance,Sharps Atlantic and Doom Bar,the Hophead being in good shape. Nice Place.

Comfy clean and cosy place. Main bar on entering, with green and red shades. An undressed stone wall food area to the left with display cabinets and uplighters. To right up a step is an exposed brick room with a lounge feel - sofas, carpet, pot plants and rugby on the TV. Spotted a fully laden Welsh dresser too. Perhaps all verging on the twee but I really liked it. Noted a random room past the corridor to the bogs that was not in use, had a dart board so presumed function/games room. Rear grassed garden. Six pumps and all dispensing; 3x Sharps (Doom Bar, Atlantic and Golden Pheasant, which is apparently rebadged Coaster?), Dark Star Hophead (good nick), Cotleigh and an unlabelled Wadworth 'seasonal' which you could try for free (it was in decent nick but I didn’t care for it). The pub grew on me more the longer I stayed and I thought it was the kind of place you could do a comfortable session in. Well-worth a trip out to sample it. 8.5