The Swan & Castle (JD Wetherspoon), Oxford

I was hoping to get here from the Royal Blenheim by cutting through the Westgate shopping centre but it's now just a building site with the Sainsbury's clinging defiantly on. I was surprised to see that it was once a Lloyds as I could see no evidence of that and even the JDW Directory (a shambolic booklet to say the least) doesn't say it's a Lloyds. It's set in a modern office block or something so is uninspiring as a building but apart from that I thought it was fine. The two banks of five hand pumps had two available soon, the IPA version of the JDW Trio Of Doom, North Cotswold Hung Drawn 'N' Portered, Hook Norton Nerdherder, Ringwood 49er, Ascot Anastasia Stout and Prescott Chequered Flag. I went for the North Cotswold Porter (£2.75) which was excellent. I thought this was a good Spoons and given that the beers in the other one were mostly boring bitters I preferred the choice here. I thought both were good Spoons especially considering the dross you find in most city centres and the standard guest price of £2.59 in both is reasonable being the same as the George in Wanstead.

A rather dull 'Spoons in the heart of Oxford City centre, handy for the bus stop and the cheap shops, but generally avoided by the student body. It has the standard mute gaming machines, cheap furniture and free WiFI, the food is straight out of the box, and the clientele are the JDW usuals. The staff were predictably inefficient – five people behind the bar, but only one serving; the rest studiously avoided eye contact. The bar is quite open and airy, the outside seating area at the back reasonably pleasant when the Sun shines, but for some reason the smokers preferred to lurk in the alley. There were 6 ales and one cider on draft. I had a pint of North Cotswold Moretown Mild, a fairly decent pint but near the end of its life. I'd come back to use the CAMRA vouchers and include in a crawl, but it isn't somewhere to eat or spend quality time as there are so many good pubs in the area.