ReviewThis looks a great pub, plenty of people passing must see it and be attracted in. It's brightly illuminated in an otherwise completely dark area and clearly visible from the main road. Unfortunately many of those people being attracted in, may give up as there is very limited parking. There's not even the option of parking nearby and walking. I have in the past attempted to park, given up and gone elsewhere.
Having managed to find a space on this occasion and squeezed past the half a dozen smokers congregating in the door way, I then found that the next obstacle was getting to the bar. The bar area itself is quite small, and there were a couple of people sat on bar stools at one end plus another half people dozen propping up the other end of the bar. I literally had to squeeze in between them to get to the bar. This was all the more frustrating as the rest of the pub was completely empty and I find this creates a rather unwelcoming atmosphere.
The pub itself is quite spacious with a long central bar, cosier bar off to the right with a beamed ceiling, parquet wood floor, church pews and an attractive, large stone fireplace and another room of to the left with a pool table. All the essential ingredients of a decent pub in fact, including a friendly barman. There was a chalk board menu with a reasonable choice of pub dishes, plus a separate board listing ten or so pizza's – obviously a speciality. The food seemed quite decent and reasonably priced.
The one thing that put me off was the noise coming from the bar area. There were lots of farmer types standing around in wellies, all chatting at a loud volume and (occasionally) using some colourful language. Now I'm not a prude and I'm sure if I'd been in there with a few mates I probably wouldn't even have noticed. But the pub does decent food, and so needs to provide an environment where that can be enjoyed. Most people dining will sit in the cosy area next to the bar, but that's right next to it and quite open, so does nothing to attenuate the noise. As it was, squeezing past the smokers, struggling to get to the bar and having a less than relaxing meal due to the noise did spoil the ambience somewhat. The locals may well claim that it's their pub, they support it regularly and like it as it is – I wouldn't disagree, and if it was purely a drinking pub I probably wouldn't even have mentioned it. But if they're going to try and attract people in for the food, they need to try and do something to make it a bit more relaxing. If it hadn't been so noisy, the pub would have been a completely different atmosphere and I would be giving it a couple more marks.
Unusually there were two beers on tap (Butcombe and Tribute) but four ciders – Thatcher's Traditional, Weston's Traditional, Thatcher's Gold and “Bee Sting” pear cider.
