The Royal Blenheim, Oxford

Not come across White Horse Brewery before. Went for a Waylands Smithy for the simple reason I had walked past it on the Ridgeway a couple of years ago! Beer was in good condition. Pub was a nice victorian single room. Only thing not to like was the soft rock piped in for ambiance. Visit blogged at http://bit.ly/2tFIpRz

A very pleasant traditional back street drinkers pub close to the Gallery of Modern Art which is actually not that far from the madness of Queen Street and Cornmarket Street but far enough to avoid it being blighted by the tourist hordes. It benefits from a good internal layout with a large tiled area for vertical drinking in front of the bar and then some pew and leather sofa seating on a slightly raised area around the windowed walls. And then an additional carpeted seating area around the back of the bar. The large windows makes the main bar section light and airy and there are plenty of period Oxford prints and photographs to give some character. The key selling point of the Royal Blenheim is the ten real ale hand pumps which focus on the local White Horse Brewery beers. There were six of these on for our visit along with Everards Stateside Rye, St Austell Trelawny and Colchester Brewery Jack Spitty. The first White Horse brew I went for was on the turn, but this was replaced for another without fuss by the Landlady and the clip immediately reversed. Like others I wouldn’t go out of my way to find White Horse beers , but this place has so much more going for it that I would not hesitate to search out the pub again.

Tucked away from Oxford's main thoroughfare, this pub is more of a local drinker's establishment. I found the manageress to be very welcoming and friendly and as far as to say, she liked a bit of humour. The pub was also quite spacious and had some decent seating areas. The pub also had a substantial range of ales across ten handpumps. I settled on a decent pint of Village Idiot from White Horse Brewery. I would definitely stay longer on a second visit.

This is a small corner pub well described below with a wooden floored bar area and a small carpeted snug behind the bar. It was quiet on my Tuesday afternoon visit. I wasn't aware of TV screens in here so if there were any they must have been turned off. I'm not a great fan of White Horse beers especially compared to other breweries involved in Project William. There were four of their beers on, three from Colchester, a cider, St Austell Liquid Sunshine and Everard's Three Tigers. I didn't look at the choice in detail but did get the impression that they were mostly bitters around the 4% ABV mark. I don't see the point of having guest ales where they are all similar. I went for the Colchester Metropolis which at £3.80 seemed like daylight robbery to me but this is central Oxford and I wasn't expecting it to be cheap. To be fair I noticed later on a menu that the White Horse regular beers were between £3.00 and £3.40. If this is the best that Oxford can come up with nowadays I can see why I'm not keen on the city but still thought this was worth a look. At least it didn't have any tourists or students!