The Three Wishes, Winchmore Hill, N21

A long and thin building,but furnished in a very traditional way ,with a long velour bench along the left side,with dividers creating the feeling of drinking booths.Large mirrors hang above the seating and it has some character.Towards the rear there is a drinking shelf with stools.There are lots of screens (5) but thankfully all on mute with Sky Sports and horse racing featuring on my trip.The attractive bar is surrounded by bar stools ,heavily used by the regulars which included a few geezers.It felt old school,a boozer out of the 70's. There are 5 handpumps but only three drawing the worst that Charles Wells can offer,namely their Courage Best,Directors and Bombardier.With that choice I opted for a half of the malty Direcectors setting me back £1.90. If only the ale selection was better,I might have warmed to this place.However any pub that plays a Clash album over the muzak system can't be all bad.

Only two of the five hand pumps were being used on my visit and they were dispensing London Pride and Courage Best. There was also a selection of standard draught available from the barmaid who did well to crack a smile as it was empty during my visit apart from a couple of old timers sitting near the front window. The pub has Sky and Setanta which is shown on some plasma screens stretching the length of this long thin pub and there is a small storage type area out the back for smoking. This place is ok for a very quiet pint, but I did get a little irritated with the sound being on for the football and the horse racing as my brain started to ache. I wouldn't go out of my way to drink here again, but I would maybe pop in if passing.

Whereas the On Broadway a couple of doors away is set up for the younger demographic the Three Wishes is aligned to their parents and grand parents. A One long bar pubwith a traditional pub type décor and although it went through a major refurb two years ago when it was changed from quite a poor 'spoons I would have thought that Axminster would have lost the pattern for this carpet a long time ago. Although there are still several handpumps from the previous guise the ale choice of Courage Best and London Pride isn't the most inspiring but both have been kept well on the times of my visits. There's usually some form of musical entertainment on a Saturday night and I'm reliably informed by friends of mine who frequent more often that the Elvis Impersonator evening is a good one to go to, if you're into that sort of thing..