Eagle Barge Inn, Spean Bridge

Having almost visited the Eagle Barge Inn on the Caledonian Canal when I was cycling in the area back in 2012, I always had it in mind to get back here some time when it was open. A recent cycling trip found me staying once again at the Great Glen hostel, which is just a mile away along the canal, and this time on an opening day for the pub. (As well as being regularly shut on Mondays and Tuesdays, the pub has a list displayed outside of when the crew are off at other times. Apparently there are only two people working here and they live over 100 miles away.) My route brought me to Laggan Locks a little earlier than intended - the pub was due to open at 4:30 and I had 45 minutes to kill, which I spent watching boats going through the lock gates and out onto Loch Lochy in the pleasant afternoon sunshine. When one of the staff turned up and changed the closed sign to one saying open, I was first through the door. There are four hand pumps on the bar, with a notice displayed next to them explaining about cask beer being served flat, which should have set alarm bells ringing. Beers available were Orkney Red MacGregor and Dark Island, and River Leven Traditional IPA. I'd had the Red earlier in the day, so went for halves of the other two. Unfortunately they were both going off, with a sour, apple-y taste. Not so off that you could smell it, just bad enough to make it difficult to drink, with the initial beery flavour replaced at the swallow by one more redolent of cider. Other drinkers were coming in and buying their beers to take away (on a departing boat) or out onto the deck, and I could see that the Red was just as cloudy as my two halves, so there didn't seem much point asking for my beer to be changed. Anyway the person serving had disappeared into the galley to help her colleague prepare food. (The only alternatives would have been bottled beers as there were no keg fonts.) In the end I just left the part-consumed beers on the bar counter and departed. It seems to me that if you are running a pub that closes on Monday & Tuesday every week, you need to make sure that your beer is going to last from Sunday to Wednesday without going off. If your pub is a barge on a canal, it is not likely that the beer is going to be kept very cool, so its chances of making it through after the weekend are going to be slim if it's already been on for a couple of days. If your attitude towards cask ale is that it's supposed to be flat and should be consumed "with a smile on your face" (I'm regretting not having photographed that notice on the bar), it seems likely that no one will have trained you in how to keep it properly. Whatever, they should have been in the habit of checking the beer for quality when pulling it through. This had clearly not been done. Very disappointing. Date of visit: 13th September 2017

Official site of Eagle Barge Inn - eaglebargeinn.weebly.com

Official site of Eagle Barge Inn - eaglebargeinn.weebly.com