The Woolpack, Chelmsford

A short walk from the town centre, this is a smart, comfortable Greene King pub that still feels very much like a local’s pub rather than a corporate venue. You enter into the left hand, main bar area – a carpeted room with a fine dark wood servery down the right hand side under an attractive stained glass canopy. Worn banquette seating follows the front and left hand walls whilst the rest of the room is furnished with standard tables and chairs. A couple of central pillars break up the sightlines through the room and there is a set of bookshelves against one of these pillars, full of old paperbacks. Pump clips line the dark wood beams that cross the ceiling and there is a pleasant fireplace on the rear wall under some brewery mirrors. Turning right, you enter a basic second room with a pump-free stretch of servery and public bar staples such as a pool table and dartboard. The pool table limits the potential for seating options and the room was subsequently empty on an early Saturday evening visit. In the rear left corner there is another area, which has lounge-style furniture in an L-shaped space and the comfy seating options arguably make this the most pleasant spot in the pub to grab a seat. A door to the right leads out to a garden with its own bar and huge amounts of stilage for the pub’s beer festivals. Beyond is an ample patio area with plenty of seating and quite a pleasant aspect. For a Greene King pub, the ale selection was reassuringly diverse, with Greene King XX Mild, H&H Bitter and Morland Old Speckled Hen supplemented by Tring Fanny Ebbs and Kellet, Brick Peckham Pale, Colchester Cream Stout and one other that was not noted. You don’t see the XX Mild all that often, so I decided to try a pint and it was very nice, if perhaps a little hard going at this stage of the crawl, which I hadn’t really anticipated. This is a nice pub with plenty of different areas in which to settle down over a well kept pint of ale. The pub’s freedom to select guest ales as it sees fit makes it a much more tempting prospect than your average Greene King house and judging by the stilage outside, it looks like their beer festival would be well worth stopping by for.

This was the last of the 6 pubs chosen from the 2011 Good Beer Guide for our visit on 23.12.10. We selected the Greene King Abbot Reserve and Vale Good King Senseless. Good to find guest ales in a Greene King house. We had a meal here from a good menu selection. It also seems to cater for all tastes which may be why it was awarded Local CAMRA Pub of the Year award 2010. There is a small bar area for those who like darts and pool, and an annexe with TV. They also host folk nights, quiz nights and hold beer festivals.