The Eltermere Inn, Ambleside

My first visit here for a long time - I think I returned the year after my previous review and not since. The bar counter is much as I remembered it, and furnishings likewise, though I don't remember seeing an ocelot on this occasion. The bar is the same but has three hand pumps, one with the pump clip turned round and two local beers available. My half of Langdale Bowfell Bitter was pretty good - a new brewery for me, but a traditional style. There were also a couple of local craft kegs: Bowness Lakes Lager and Hawkshead Helles. I nearly always go in the Britannia when in Elterwater, but this would make an acceptable alternative if it's too busy there.

This hotel on the edge of the small village has very smartly laid out grounds and a great view down the valley, but it's clearly not many years since it was a fairly ordinary farmhouse. The bar entrance is down some steps through a small patio on the road side of the building, though if you're travelling by car it's only a short step from the car park round the side. The bar is to the left as you enter - a false right turn would take you along the corridor to the hotel dining room. The bar itself is a modern affair with high chairs for perching, that would not look out of place in any off-the-shelf hotel in the land, though the bar counter is one slab of plain, rough-hewn wood (beech?) which might raise a few eyebrows in Mayfair. But the room it is in looks just like an old-fashioned Lake District farmhouse kitchen parlour. I don't know how much of this is due to the original room and how much to the efforts of an expensive architect. There are various benches and settles, with rustic tables taking up all the available space before a raised stone fireplace. The walls are painted a cosy deep red (perhaps more hotel than farmhouse, but not entirely inappropriate) and the floor is made of slate flagstones. Various dead animals adorn the walls, if that is the right word: a presumably local deer, and a not-so-local ocelot, plus a number of fish in display cases. On the bar are three hand pumps, two of them in use on my visit, serving Hawkshead Bitter and Jennings Cumberland Ale. My Hawkshead was in good condition and I had a pleasant half-hour here and wouldn't mind returning. An interesting alternative to the Britannia just up the road.