The George Hotel (JD Wetherspoon), Peterborough

A fine old coaching inn that looks a picture from the Market Square (where a fair number of wooden benches can be found now that it's part pedestrianised). Given the Wetherspoon treatment inside, but it retains a multi-room layout with dark furniture and wood panelling. Also has a small patio garden on the left-hand side. I found a duplicated selection of Ruddles, Doom Bar and Abbot plus Old Speckled Hen and Jaipur (£3.10) on the two banks of five handpumps.

Official site of The George Hotel (JD Wetherspoon) - www.jdwetherspoon.com

Official site of The George Hotel (JD Wetherspoon) - www.jdwetherspoon.com

A quintessential 'spoons with the added advantage of a decent ale range. Beers on when we visited were: GK Abbot and Ruddles Best, Doom Bar, Purity UBU, Lacons Encore, Titanic Iron Curtain and Wolf Lupus Lupus and Edith Cavell. Aside from the usual dross a very good selection and it was well kept on our visit. It clearly works as it was busy on our midweek visit and with beer like this I can understand why.

This is a fairly typical recently opened small town Spoons that although still called the George Hotel is not being used as one. It opened in 2010 and the layout is fairly typical for a newer spoons with seated eating areas as you enter and the bar area at the back of the building. There is a paved patio to the left. It's all generally a bit more plush than most older city Spoons. I saw no obvious signs of the celebrated daytime brigade. The bar has two sets of five hand pumps which on my visit had GK Ruddles doubled up, Abbot, Doom Bore, London Pride, Oakham Bishop's Farewell, Adnam's Bitter "Available Soon", Adnam's Ghost Ship, Topaz Gold & Mosaic. There was an Adnam's Bank holiday "festival" going which isn't really what it may seem for as far as I know current Adnam's ales are available to order in any Southern Spoons whether they are on the current guest list or not. Anyway, I went with the flow and tried the Topaz Gold (£2.20) which was in good condition but had a slight haze. Overall this is a better than average Spoons and is well worth a look. It was listed in the 2015 GBG but not in the new 2016 one.