Flint Cottage, High Wycombe

This striking pub, with its impressive flint walls (the pub was formerly called 'The Flint Cottage') is situated opposite High Wycombe train station and boasts what I suspect is the town's best beer selection by far. You enter the pub into a spacious tiled floor area, with the bar counter roughly opposite and a few scrubbed tables and chairs around the edges. The room is quite pleasant, with its dark wood beams and large fireplace, but with limited seating, most customers were sat in one of the two rooms either side of the bar. The room to the left is actually more like an extension of the front area, following the bar, which runs a short length towards the rear, beyond which the space opens out and is filled with some sofas and extra tables and chairs, with a large screen showing live rugby and a DJ seemingly setting up in the back corner in preparation for the approaching Saturday evening. There is access to a rear garden from both ends of the pub. The room to the right of the bar has a wooden floor and more tables and sofas, perhaps creating more of a lounge bar feel than in the rest of the pub. The most striking feature is the row of huge fridges full of some of the 300 bottled beers the pub claims to have on offer. The pub is decorated with lots of beer advertisements from around the world as well as some framed beer mats. The beer choice is suitably impressive if bottled beer is your thing. A lengthy beer menu was available from the bar, and it listed an awful lot of bottled delights country by country. Most of the UK beers were priced around the £4.00-5.00 mark with prices rising for some of the foreign offerings. Cask ale fans are well catered for as well and my visit saw three beers from the Rebellion brewery (a sign outside suggested that at least one Rebellion beer would always be available) in the shape of Smuggler (£3.20), IPA and Handyman. In addition to this, there was also Titanic Lifeboat, Beer Rocks British, Loddon Hoppit and Wadworth Swordfish. All of this was detailed on a blackboard above the bar, which also specified styles and abv's. The bar staff seemed to know their stuff, especially regarding the bottles and I was given the choice of a straight or handled glass. I thought this pub would appeal to a lot of people, not just those looking out for new beers, and its location next to the station makes it a perfect start or finish point for any crawl round town. I'll definitely call again the next time I'm in town.