Bridge 61, Market Harborough

Intriguing prospect, a single storey whitewashed building with two rooms with exposed whitewashed stone, brick floor, vaulted ceiling and an outside area. There’s some old canal-related stuff plus farmyard/workshop implements hung on the walls. The bar is a small hatch servery in the snug room and there’s no option but to queue in order to get served. Two Langton cask available, expensive at £5.60 a pint (prices prominently advertised, to be fair) and my Widebeam was very good (NBSS 4), I guess you're paying for the location and seasonal footfall. Cobs available. I quite liked it here, it’s much more of a pub than the place over the way. 7.5

A small and traditional looking stone built pub facing directly out on to the pleasant canal junction, it’s much more inconspicuous than it’s all together larger and brasher neighbour just opposite and looks just as much like a small shop or eatery than a pub, not least perhaps because these do indeed form part of the same building. There are a few picnic benches immediately outside the pub to make the most of the outlook, and a decent size beer garden alongside. Internally it consists of two quite smallish rooms, with the one containing the bar counter being especially tiny. In actual fact, the bar counter consists of little more than two hatches, with a brick chimney breast in between. One is labelled as being for soft and alcoholic drinks, with the other for hot drinks and food. The hatches are made from arched brickwork, quite what their original purpose was I’m not sure. Décor wise it’s quite traditional, with varnished wood panelling on the ceiling, whitewashed brick walls and a brick tiled floor. A few colourful plates were on the wall depicting various views of the canal whilst a specials board listed a few options such as Beef Bourguignon, Vegetable Sweet & Sour or Chicken in a Black Bean sauce, and most of these were priced at a very reasonable £5 or so. The adjacent room had a flagstone floor, exposed brickwork on the walls and an attractive vaulted ceiling with all manner of farming implements on display. Beers on tap were Langton’s Inclined Plane (named after the nearby and short lived system for hoisting boats between two levels of canal as opposed to traversing the flight of ten locks), Langton’s Redwood and Adnam’s Southwold. Ciders meanwhile were Stowford Press and Old Rosie. All in all, a great little pub and well worth stopping by.