The Fountain, Builth Wells

Just over 10 years since our last visit to Builth Wells, we returned to give the Fountain a try. With a sharp shower just starting outside, we were glad to get indoors. The landlady was welcoming and invited us to sit in the window for a drink and a spot of lunch. The ale range seemed a bit more limited than it usually might be, with a couple of clips turned round. The 2 on were Thornbridge Brother Rabbit & Acorn Barnsley Bitter. In addition, they also had Weston's Family Reserve cider on another handpull hiding behind one of the pub's pillars. With the adjoining cafe served from the kitchen, food was a little slow to arrive, but was still tasty. Most other customers were also there for food, apart from a couple of locals who sat by the fireplace watching the Olympics on the TV . One seemed to have a very limited vocabulary that consisted mainly of profanities. Such is market town life, I suppose.

Deceptive as my two pictures show the left side is angled as a cafe, no pun intended as it's close to the Wye but they are all the same building, whether knocked through in recent years to expand our as was. There was karaoke on on my visit which after watching them set up in what I thought was a possible New pub was quite happy to sit further enough

The entrance to this place leads into a small L shaped wooden floored room with the bar on the left and a further area over to the left on the other side of the bar. There is fairly limited seating in the main bar area but it looked like there was more on the other side. To the rear is a pool table which was covered and some sort of Hoop La game. There was a fair crowd in on my Friday afternoon visit. The bar has four hand pumps devoted to beer and three to cider. There were two unused for each so beers available were Wye Valley Butty Bach, Dark Star Hophead and Wobbly Wabbit. I went for the Wobbly Wabbit (£2.70) which was very good and may have been cheap as part of a Happy Hour offer. I thought this one was easily the best of four visited in Builth.