The Mockbeggar Hall (JD Wetherspoon), Wirral

Visited yesterday afternoon. World Cup was being shown on the big screen so it was quite busy in the main bar. However there is a further room to the back which was pretty quiet, and an enclosed beer garden out the back which also had seating available. The front of the Mockbeggar Hall has those big folding windows that open to make it feel like you are sat on a terrace, which seemed to work well and was popular in the heat. At the bar there were two banks of five pumps, the two banks were exact duplicates of each other. Conspicuous by their absence were the usual Spoons real ales (Ruddles, Doom Bar, Abbot etc) so that meant all five were offering guest ales, which compensates for the duplication. At the time of my visit, Peerless Knee Buckler IPA, Bombardier, Hooky, an American style IPA the name of which I can't recall, and the final one was Hope & Glory, which I think was by Coach House and I have seen it at other Wetherspoon pubs recently. The Hooky was on some kind of special offer at £1.25 a pint. Most of the others seemed to be £2.05 a pint but I was charged £1.75 for mine which I think was probably as a result of the Monday Club promotion I have heard about where there is a discount on real ale. There was a loud sweary old man in the beer garden who looked like he had been there all day, so you can imagine what state he was in by 4pm. All part of the eclectic mix of Spoons patrons. Bogs were a bit smelly but otherwise not a bad Spoons with a good selection of real ale to choose from.

This is another fairly typical shop conversion consisting of a long narrow room with a patio at the rear and all the usual furnishings. It wasn't packed on my Saturday afternoon visit. The bar has two sets of five hands pumps which had Abbot, Doom Bore, Banks's Alpha 5 IPA and Jenning's Snecklifter doubled up, Peerless Knee Buckler and Brain's SA. I went for the Peerless beer but it turned out that despite not having an "available soon" attachment was having the line cleaned. I went for the Banks's International Alpha 5 (£2.20) which was in good nick. For me the Peerless beer not being on and the doubling up of beers let this one down.

Uninspiring Wetherspoons.

A J D Wetherspoon establishment