The Boars Head, Brecon

As mentioned below the Boars Head was formerly the Tap pub for the Breconshire Brewery located in the business park a mile or so away on the A40 ring road. But it was taken over in September 2013 and following a brief period of closure for a major makeover, re-opened in March 2014 free of any tie. Although no different from the outside, from what I could see from previous photo’s,now quite modern and contemporary inside with lots of clean wooden floors and furniture and lots of led lighting, but still just enough character with some nice exposed brick and stone walls to retain some traditional pub feel. The smaller front bar has some seating to the side of the main bar around a flat screen tele and then the larger square back room has a larger serving bar with two flat screens on the side walls, seating throughout and a small stage section at the back which usually has an additional table and chairs when there is no live music on. But the key feature of the Boars head still remains the lovely enclosed riverside patio pub garden with its bench seating, large umbrellas and excellent views of the River Usk and the Brecon Beacons beyond. Our initial visit was straight into this patio garden during the Brecon Fringe for one of the live bands to be greeted by the initial shock of seeing a large banner for Doombar, pub staff running around in branded Doombar shirts and only Doombar as an ale available on the pop up bar that was servicing the outside section. Fortunately this was just down to the marketing power of Molson Coors who seemed to be sponsoring the fringe bar at this pub and a trip inside found four hand pumps on the front bar and three on the back and, although one of the front ones was dispensing Doombar, there were four regional Welsh ales spread across the other six. These were Pecker Wrecker and Cwrw Haf from the Tomos Watkins brewery, Paragon from the Redstone Micro and one from the local Brecon Brewery and we tried them all over our couple of visits I quite liked this pub and The Boars Head was one we returned to after the Fringe weekend for further beers in the patio garden, but it would still be unfair to rate it because for the following few days after the festival there is more life to be found in the morgue room of Newport’s Royal Gwent Hospital than in the town of Brecon, so still not representative of what it is like normally for the rest of the year.

Cracking real ale pub - it's the tap for Breconshire Brewery, but also offers at least on guest outside of the brewery. Walk through the front door into a small, wooden bar (wood floor, bar, tables - all nicely mixed, think opposite of a trendy wine bar decked in pine everywhere). 7 Ale pumps, Quoits board, usual lagers/ciders. Westons Scrumpy available as well. Go through to the second bar, and a large, flagstone room houses a pool table, Juke box, 2 screens (not on) sofas, tables and chairs and access to the beer garden, overlooking the river. Beer quality spot on, and food proper home-made pub grub (chicken curry for me).

From the outside it doesn't look much, but in the summer you can't get better than just sitting in the beer garden of the Boar's Head, listening to the ducks on the river as it flows alongside. There's always a good local crowd in here, the staff are friendly, the meals are excellent value for money, and the prices are reasonable for such a tourist hot spot. It's never too full (Jazz Festival aside) and it's a shame to pull yourself away from the fire on a cold winter's night. There's a nice bar and a sizeable lounge-cum-restaurant. Real ales, pool table, jukebox, Sky TV, occasional live music. Check out the plaque on a nearby wall, showing the extent of the floods which hit the town in Victorian times.