Spooner's, Porthmadog

Located in the station buildings of the Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland railways, this is a strange combination of cafe and pub set up for the most part to cater for tourists passing through the town. We visited after a journey on the steam train from Caernarfon and found the place in a fair bit of disarray with the bar end of the pub clearly the victim of unruly children who had left food, crayons and all sorts of other detritus littered around the floor. The area was now occupied by a crowd of noisy youths whilst the cafe end of the room was dominated by pensioners enjoying coffees and the views out to the platforms. This end of the room has standard tables in chairs opposite a food service counter and doesn't really feel much like a pub, but there is some fine railway memorabilia on display here including old station signs and some plaques. The space is smartly carpeted and the views to the steam trains make it a good spot for railway enthusiasts to watch the goings on in the station. As you move further into the room, the place takes on more of a pub feel, with a conventional servery emerging down one side and smarter tables and chairs appearing along with some screened banquette booths opposite the bar. The servery has a green counter and plain, modern bar back and a canopy decorated with engine name plates. The room opens out a fair bit past the bar where loads of extra seating can be found and a nice clock acts as a visual centrepiece in an area full of lots more railway memorabilia. The star of the show is the Topsy steam locomotive which is housed in a glass case on the back wall with some black and white photos above. This locomotive is a small model built back in 1869 for Charles Easton Spooner, the former secretary and engineer of the Ffestiniog Railway Company who lends his name to this pub. Topsy, despite being a scale model, was the first locomotive built by the Ffestiniog Railway's Boston Lodge workshop and used to run around a track in Spooner's garden - it certainly makes an appropriate display in the pub and anyone with an interest in steam trains would do well to have a quick look at it. I wasn't expecting a great deal at the bar, so a decent row of handpulls came as a pleasant surprise and I was able to choose from Purple Moose Dark Side of the Moose and Snowdonia Ale, Bath Golden Hare, Thwaites Wainwright, Wychwood Hobgoblin, Banks's Mild and Wye Valley HPA. The HPA was in good shape and we also stopped off for some food from the grill menu which was sensibly priced and very filling. The staff seemed like a friendly bunch and the pub certainly seems to draw in a diverse crowd, albeit of a rather transient nature. This is a strange pub that was quite difficult to form an accurate impression of. The area opposite the bar seemed to be the best spot as it was probably the only area that actually felt like a proper pub, with the section near the entrance looking like a cafeteria and the end of the pub feeling likely a poorly managed creche. Thankfully we managed to get a seat opposite the bar and passed a pleasant 45 minutes of so admiring the decor, enjoying some hearty food and sampling the well kept beer. Worth a look if you're staying in town or planning a trip on the railway.

I thought this place was a bit like a Wetherspoons only with the food side separated off. It's a large single room with the bar down one side and plenty of tables and seats. On my visit the Railway was holding a Victorian weekend so every now and then oddly dressed people would arrive, some who looked like the "Laydees" from Little Britain only they weren't men. Others present seemed to be the odd locals, visitors to the two lines and the occasional overbearing train buff. On the bar were eight pumps with Purple Moose Dark Side of the Moose and Snowdonia, Banks's Mild and Sunbeam, Three Tuns Solstice, Brakspear's Head Of the River, Wye Valley Bitter and Gwynt Y Ddraig Happy Daze cider. I went for the Three Tuns Solstice (£3.20) and the Purple Moose Snowdonia (£2.90) both of which were in excellent nick. It seemed odd that I was charged 30p more for the Solstice, especially as I had a quick pint of Sadler's JPA a couple of days later for £2.90. I imagine the beer choice is reduced in the winter months when the trains are restricted and there are less tourists around. It's worth a visit if you come to Porthmadog but it is a bit like drinking in a Spoons, maybe that's why they called it Spooners.

Pleasant enough little pub with several real ales on handpull. We sampled the Purple Moose Dark Side of the Moose & Snowdonia both of which were very good. Now has TWO narrow gauge railways running outside it! - the Welsh Highland Railway uses the Festiniog platforms then after some intricate shunting heads out across the main road up to Caernarvon. Loco Princess has been evicted from the bar area and her replacement is currently un-refurbished "King Of The Scarlets" which was recently repatriated from Canada. Note - bar can get busy when the steam trains arrive.