The Hudson Bay (JD Wetherspoon), Forest Gate, E7

Fairly ugly looking branch of Wetherspoon's in an area not particularly known for its real ale. The pubs entry into the Good Beer Guide brought me here. Inside is fairly dark and there was the usual Spoon's range of Greene King Abbot, Ruddles Best & Sharp's Doom Bar with 3 guest ales - Oakham JHB, Brain's SA & Exmoor Gold. In addition, there were 2 real ciders - Weston's Old Rosie & Gwynt y Ddraig Black Dragon. Having just been to the New Fairlop Oak in Barkingside, I didn't take to this 'spoon's quite as much. Although at least it did have a couple of ciders.

Official site of The Hudson Bay (JD Wetherspoon) - www.jdwetherspoon.com

Official site of The Hudson Bay (JD Wetherspoon) - www.jdwetherspoon.com

It’s a ‘spoons, so expect no surprises. The ale selection wasn’t brilliant by ‘spoons standards, with the usual suspects being overly prominent. But they did have four guest ales on – Mansfield Original, Sambrook’s Wandle, Banks Mild, and Jennings Pie in the Sky. Obviously the usual pub grub is available. This is an oddly, geometry defying, shaped pub, seemingly born from the merging of two or three buildings. But it’s as comfortable inside as any ‘spoons pub, and has a fairly nice garden at the back. I spotted some Hudson Bay cartography around the place, as well as some information about Henry Hudson, who I suppose must hail from these parts. It did its job when I needed a bite to eat with something to wash it down.

I'm prepared to accept that I may have visited this Spoons on an off day, but to be honest it's one of the worst I have ever been to. It's another shop conversion and fairly ugly in my opinion. My major gripe with it was that on the final Friday of the Spoon's festival, of the eight pumps there were four allocated to the two usual GK suspects, two allocated to that well known Spoons guest "available soon" (in this case it was two non-festival offerings from the Marston's stable). This left two festival pumps, one with a cider and the other with the 4% Cambridge Brewing Heather ale. I'll give it a mark of two simply for the fact that the Heather Ale was in good form, but to be honest I'm not used to drinking beers in pubs lower than 4.5%. If the beer quality had been poor then it would have got a big fat zero.