Albatros, Wells Town, Wells-Next-The-Sea

You really need to know what you’re looking for when trying to find this place – we’d sat on the wall opposite for several minutes, eating our fish and chips earlier in the day, without once clocking the fact that this Dutch barge is actually a pub. There’s some proper theatre involved in visiting this place, whether that be the shaky gangplank crossing to board the vessel, the careful tip-toeing around the uneven and extremely cluttered deck or the precarious steep descent into the cabin to locate the bar. The latter requires you to descend a near vertical staircase, perhaps better tacked backwards, as if descending a ladder. It’s worth the effort though, as you find yourself in a dimly-lit cabin with hard benches and long tables down either side, nautical charts lining the walls, floral painted patterns across the ceiling and a small servery along the back wall. It’s an interesting space that you can imagine being lined with hardened seafaring types, although there was just one bloke sipping a coffee in here on our visit, which shattered the illusion a bit. The majority of the seating, at least on the warm summer’s day we visited on, was scattered across the deck, mostly in the form of metal garden furniture. You really need your wits about you as you attempt to navigate your way around the deck, thanks to all sorts of heavy-duty equipment having been strewn around the place, with the tables dumped haphazardly in between it all – for a land-lubber like me, the prospect of ending up in the river after a few pints seemed highly probable! The bar had two casks racked up at either end of the counter, with a third resting on the floor. From a board next to the bar, I was able to infer that these were Woodforde’s Wherry, Nelson’s revenge and Volt IPA. I would’ve quite liked to try the later, but this appeared to be the one of the floor and I thought the odds of someone having kicked the cask at some point were too high to risk, so I went for the Nelson’s Revenge instead, which was a decent drop, if perhaps a little too warm. The pub does food as well, including many traditional Dutch snacks such as poffertjes (mini pancakes), frickandel (minced-meat hot-dog) and Dutch apple cake. I really enjoyed exploring this old barge and thought it was interesting how they’d left it much as it would have looked when it was operational, providing a sharp contrast to somewhere like Charters in Peterborough – another, admittedly much larger Dutch barge that has been given a very smart pub and restaurant refit. Some decent cask ale adds to the appeal and makes it more than just a novelty visit.

Official site of Albatros - www.albatroswells.co.uk

Official site of Albatros - www.albatroswells.co.uk