Black Horse, Buntingford

Secluded village pub set just off a lane. I arrived at midday opening on a Friday lunchtime to find a couple of barmaids and one or two kitchen staff working in an open kitchen strangely positioned at the far right end of the pub opposite the toilets. The main part of the pub is split into a number of rooms, with a dining area off to the left and the bar area on the right. Beyond the kitchen and the toilets was further space for dining. It was cold inside and the barmaids decided that the heating had packed up. It was also unnecessarily noisy with music in the bar competing with more music coming from the kitchen. Pie nights and quiz nights were being promoted. Doom Bar is the regular beer here, with guests being Landlord & Boltmaker. Opposite the pub is a nice-looking garden, with a large car park further back. I remained the only customer throughout my visit. Although a cyclist had arrived by the time I'd managed to leave the pub car park, having been blocked in by a lorry making a food delivery!

Sitting back from the main road through the village of Brent Pelham, the Black Horse is your typical country pub that started life as a small stone building for the benefit of local farm workers which has now been added to and extended to accommodate additional restaurant dining areas. So what you have here is a long thin pub with a central bar that you enter into and then additional dining to the right at a higher floor level as the pub climbs up the slope away from the main village road. Traditional interior with lots of original beams there are three hand pumps on the bar but only two are even in operation with a permanent Adnams Bitter and a changing guest, which for my last visit was a decent St Austell’s Tribute. This pub has the advantage of a large car park space to the back and a sizeable raised garden area to the side, which makes it an ideal spot to visit when walking or cycling the nearby Hertfordshire country side. Decent standard pub food menu here and I usually visit for lunch when the sandwich options are quite good. As usual for an isolated village pub the opening times vary during the week, being closed on a Monday and only evening opening on a Tuesday and then both lunchtime and evening opening when you get closer to the weekend.