Royal Oak, New Basford, Nottingham

The Royal Oak is an ex Ships tons pub located on the busy Nottingham road. You enter up several steps and are immediately confronted with the small bar. The drinks selection here is extremely limited and on my visit almost all of the keg pumps had towels on them leaving a mammoth choice of Strongbow, John Smiths and Fosters………SIGH!! The only remotely interesting choice was Red Stripe Lager but this too had a towel covering it. We were charged £3.30 for the John smiths which is frankly an enormous price to pay for this type of beer in Notting in this are and in this type of pub and I think this was done purposely because we didn’t fit the usual clientele shall we say. This moves us on to the next point, the customers. The pub has seating to the left and right of the bar with a pool table further to the back in a small separate room, things are quite tight and the pub is rather small and snug, much more so than it looks from the outside. This pub attracts a lot of undesirable customers and it has a very intimidating atmosphere, we got quite a few looks even from the young barman, especially as I was in collar and tie coming straight from work. There is also a very strong following from the African community in this pub which means horrendously loud reggae music is constantly turned out which is most annoying when trying to sit and enjoy a beer. This is an all-round bad pub that has very few redeeming features; I would not like to be around here late at night when they hold all night parties till the early hours. This is busier than the Pelham round the back but at least I could sit in peace and enjoy a beer there, here I was always on edge. The only redeeming feature was the presence of a roaring open wood fire which took me totally by shock in a place like this so the best mi can say was this place was warm! A true pit this one with no beer and the worst people drinking there absolutely avoid!