Park Tavern, Old Basford, Nottingham

The Park tavern sits at the side of the busy Arnold Road in new Basford. This used to be a Home Ales tied house that along with the Heathfield up the road served the nearby Heathfeild estate and surrounding areas. While the Shipstons owned Heathfield lasted up until about five years ago the Park tavern has remained. Covered in a white render on the outside the pub has recently had new royal blue signs installed on the exterior and I thought that this could possibly be a sign of things to come. As you enter you are faced with doors on either side, the right leading to a lounge while the left goes into a open plan room with minimal seating that has a pool and darts as the main focus so is mostly standing room only. Beyond this room you can access another at the back that is more of a bar area with some seating. The pub is much bigger on the inside than the outside suggests. This are very dated inside and the pub has not had much modernisation over the last 30 years as everything was in a very dated style with tatty carpets and a general sense of neglect. The three rooms are all served by a centrally located bar that allows staff to walk round to each serving area at will. The beer selection in here was very poor with the most restricted of keg selections featuring all the usual suspects but there was Theakston’s mild that we were told was on offer at only £1.50 a pint that we thought was too good to turn down. OH MY JESUS this was so bad a food hygiene inspector would need a tribble heart bypass to recover from the shock of what was being served. God only knows how a keg mild got so screwed up judging by the server telling me that they had only been in the pub two weeks makes me come to the conclusion that hat were selling off the out of date mild from the previous tenements. It was frankly rancid and you won’t be surprised to hear that it wasn’t finished. To my disdain I had to cough up another £1.30 for a (even by johns smiths standards) a woeful half of John Smiths) purely to rid myself of the taste of the mild. Overall a very bad experience was had here as aside from the drinks there was hardly soul inn and with the quality and selection on offer in here I shall not be returning in any great hurry. I wasn’t expecting a lot from here but was left very disappointed with my visit here and will be avoiding unless something drastic changes.