Old Smugglers Inn, St Brelade

This is a very cosy two-bar pub just up from the beach in the quiet village of Le Ouaisne. We walked here across the sands at low tide from St Brelade’s Bay, which was a great little walk that helped us work up enough of a thirst to merit a stop here. You enter into the main bar which has a row of seats along the front wall and the servery down most of the back wall. The room is carpeted and has a lot of whitewashed wall space and a ceiling that is criss-crossed with dark wood beams. The bar has an attractive traditional counter and a simple bar back decorated with a few pirate-themed odds and ends including three characterful knitted pirates! The room has been decorated in a traditional rural pub style, mainly involving old paintings, although there was a TV screen in the far-right corner which was showing a live rugby union game with the sound on. A door to the left leads through to a much smaller lounge area, also carpeted, but limited to some hard bench and chair seating around three tables. A very basic bar counter at the rear of the room remained unstaffed throughout our time there and there is a nice stone fireplace to the right which provides some welcome visual distraction in an otherwise fairly uniformly decorated room. Upon leaving the pub and walking on up the hill towards the bus stop on Route de Noirmont, we noticed that the building extends quite a long way to the left, which made us wonder whether there aren’t more rooms which only get opened up during the high season. The pub has made it into recent editions of the Good Beer Guide, and they had four cask ales ready and waiting at the bar – Draught Bass, Wychwood Dirty Tackle, Ringwood Fortyniner and Marston’s Pedigree. The latter was in good shape and served to me by a very friendly, if somewhat ‘not-quite-with-it’ barmaid. This struck me as a very pleasant, cosy rural pub that is hidden away enough to make it feel like an undiscovered gem. I’m sure such an illusion would quickly vanish in the summer months, but we enjoyed a relaxed pint in a proper pub and would definitely make the effort to come back when we’re next on the island.