The Gate Clock (JD Wetherspoon), Greenwich, SE10

The Gate Clock is an open plan featureless Spoons with a bar that stretches along the rear wall. Standard draught is available and I noted the presence of Hobgoblin, Bateman’s Black and White, Abbot, Young’s Special, Broadside, Doom Bar, Ruddles, Orkney Brewery’s Dark Island and Old Rosie cider on cask. The Publican was also available, which seems to be some sort of collaboration between Adnams and the American brewer Societe. Even though busy on Wednesday afternoon there was no atmosphere and I found it to be thoroughly depressing.

This is a wholly uninspiring Spoons next door to the Legoland Railway Cutty Sark Station. It's a modern place with a low ceiling and the usual mix of high and low tables and chairs. I turned up here today at around 10:30 and the place was well busy with various people having meals. Despite the 10 handpumps the beer selection was very poor and the prices were high for a Spoons outside of Central London. The ten pumps were taken up with 2 Ciders (1 turned around), GK Ruddles and Abbot, Adnam's Broadside, Doombar, Bateman's Rosey Nosey, London Pride, Young's Special and Hobgoblin. There is a bar upstairs that I didn't look into. If it wasn't for the fact that the Rosey Nosey (£2.70) was in excellent condition I think that this would have ranked as the worst Spoons I've been to this year. I certainly wouldn't return here, but to be honest I see little point in returning to the tourist trap that Greenwich is.

This is a decent sized Wetherspoons pub next to the Greenwich DLR station and close to Greenwich Market. The pub has a split level ground floor with the bar running the length of the back wall. A raised seating area takes up the front right corner of the room and there is ample additional seating available in the extended left hand side where a number of Greenwich themed artworks hang on the walls. The seating is generally very comfortable, with lots of padded chairs and just a handful of high tables and stools in the area directly opposite the bar. The front of the pub has floor to ceiling windows, but surprisingly little natural light seems to get in, thanks in part to a shading effect created by an overhang which covers the walkway outside. Upstairs there is a simple rectangular room with a second bar and some TV screens showing the afternoon’s Six Nations Rugby match. On the bar I noted ten hand pumps offering six guest ales, two ‘Spoons regular ales and a couple of ciders. I had an interminably long wait to get served, but was eventually able to get hold of a pint of Saltaire Cascade (£2.55) which went down nicely. The staff, although slow, did seem to be getting a lot of unnecessary grief from some of the less salubrious customers, who they dealt with in a professional manner. This isn’t a great Wetherspoons and certainly doesn’t have much of a pubby feel to it, but I thought it redeemed itself in a few areas, especially the decent ale selection. With no real stand-out pub in Greenwich, this place is worth a look now and again.

A fairly soulless standard beer and food by numbers Wetherspoons outlet almost next door to the Cutty Sark DLR station entrance. Fairly bright interior, due to its corner location and significant amount of exterior glass and there is an additional upstairs area, which was not open at the time of my early lunchtime visit. Shut your eyes and you could be in any one of the formulaic bar offerings, but if you want to catch breakfast and a pint or spend some time whilst waiting for someone to emerge from the station, then it qualifies as being fit for purpose. Mainly because there are 10 ale hand pumps on the bar in two groups of five, and the majority were dispensing decent regional brewery beers rather than the usual OSH and Abbott house ales. These included Wolf Brewery Whistle, Hildon Scullion Irish Ale and three from the Windsor & Eton brewery including Guardsman, which was a well served pint. So no complaints on the beer front, just expect to share your drinking experience with NASA astronauts practicing to get used to an environment with no atmosphere.

This modern glass fronted Wetherspoons stands on the site of previous pub called the Ship and takes its current name from the clock on the gates of the nearby Royal Observatory, the centerpiece of world time. The interior is spread over 2 floors with the trademark Wetherspoon blandness apparent throughout. The large open ground floor has a slight raised area at the front and a few wood and steel pillars breaking up the sight lines but overall it is generally a rather featureless interior that hardly deserves more than a passing glance.There isn’t much in the way of local displays which is surprising given the amount of history and number of personalities associated with Greenwich. There is however a 1937 photo of the previous pub which will be of interest to pub historians. It wasn’t unit my third or fourth visit that I realized there was an upstairs bar accessed by the staircase to the right of the main bar that I had always assumed led to nowhere more adventurous than the toilets. The upstairs has its own bar and a couple of flat screen TVs but again, there isn’t really much beyond the formulaic nature of ‘Spoons. There is also some outside seating under the buildings front overhang but it’s hardly relaxing with the busy traffic trundling past. Beer wise there are 15 hand pumps (10 downstairs and 5 upstairs) but my most recent visits have seen the usual stock supplemented by numerous Adnams beers (presumably some recent local tie up) with just the occasional more interesting option. I wouldn’t normally mention food as everyone knows what to expect but I have to say that I rarely have meals as bad as I have encountered here on my last couple of visits with dishes regularly served up stone cold. Like most ‘Spoons, the Gate Clock meets its not too stretching goals but in an area with several more interesting options for a pint, it doesn’t exactly come across as an essential visit even on a pub crawl.

Randomness Guide to London - Gate Clock entry

Randomness Guide to London - Gate Clock entry