The Bank House (JD Wetherspoon), Cheltenham

i’m no great fan of Tim Martin and Spoons but at least they are reliably open and reliably without awkward table service and bookings systems, some much needed normality in these odd times. Decent local ale, sensible bar service system, the question is why are some other pubs so intent on over complicating this process? The usual Spoons characters were in here, and the layout standard but with extra partitions up between tables.

2 floor spoons with quite a plain interior.

I made the schoolboy error of coming to Cheltenham without checking if there was racing on so as well as the normal Saturday shoppers and others there was a fair contingent of inbred horsey types. As it has been converted into two floors (I didn't look upstairs) there is little evidence inside of it having been a bank. The downstairs bar has a set of three hand pumps and a set of six. The three had the JDW Trio Of Doom and the six one unused and five festival ales. I went for the Arundel Coffee Milk Stout (£2.35 festival price) which was in good nick. I would have appreciated this one more on a quieter day but it looked like it's probably OK.

Fairly standard JDW with a Mezzanine floor , usual mix of spoons customers , decent selection of local ales , Cheltenham Premium SPA , North Cotswold Hung Drawn and Portered and Prescot Chequered flag all in good nick , service was pretty good as well .