Olde Trout Tavern, Southend-On-Sea

An alehouse of sorts, although looking a bit more like a café at the front (and a fish and chips shops from a distance). Perhaps twice the size of a typical micro-pub at ground-floor level, but there's also an upstairs room by the look of things. The 'house' Trout Ale from Wantsum, Greene King's London Glory and Golden Fez from Mighty Oak (£4.30) plus a Snails Bank cider available from the four handpumps. Thankfully my beer was in better shape than the atmosphere, which was very flat on a Sunday afternoon.

Quite light and bright and full of life. Not necessarily a traditional pub (very much feels like a shop or restaurant conversion) and is fairly plain but perfectly acceptable, with further seating upstairs. At the bar were three cask ales and a cider. They do jugs of beer so I slipstreamed behind one just out, meaning another excellent pint of George's Brewery, this time the Wallasea (fair to say that I was getting a taste for their old skool bitters by now) which shook the Richter scale at NBSS 4.5 - so well-worth the GBG slot. 7.5