The Red Lion Inn, Okehampton

Centrally positioned in the small village of Exbourne, easily reached from Okehampton and the A30, the Red Lion is a pleasant 16th Century rural pub notable for serving all of its beer on gravity. You enter into a lobby area of sorts with the main bar to the left and an overspill room to the right. The L-shaped bar area is carpeted in the main, with the servery in the rear left corner. The walls are half panelled with fixed benches running along the right hand side, supplemented by regular chairs. The room is typical of this sort of traditional rural pub, with a dark wood beamed ceiling and a fine stone fireplace on the front wall holding a stove inside and large blackboards above which list the full menu. Each table had a bottle with fresh flowers on it, which was quite a nice touch. The tongue and groove bar counter and plain bar back aren't that interesting, apart from the notable lack of handpulls, but if you pass the bar, you'll find a small nook in the front left corner of the building where a few more seats can be found under a teapot collection and a stack of books in the window sill. The other room, to the right of the entrance, offers several more tables in a quarry stone floored space which was full of diners on our Sunday lunchtime visit. A nice fireplace to the rear must see a lot of action in the colder months, as the stone floor lent the room a rather chilly feel. There are a couple of outdoor seating options in front of the tiny car park - we found that we were able to park up on the main road through the village, just past the church, with no fuss. The ales are racked up behind the bar and you select them by consulting the pump clips affixed to the bar canopy. The options on this visit were Bays Topsail, Sharps Original and Dartmoor Jail Ale. A few interesting keg offerings broadened the range and they were promoting a bottled stout, although I forgot to note what it was. The very cheery bar team served up a fine drop of the Topsail which I enjoyed with my excellent roast pork. The food in general was very good quality, with lots of locally sourced ingredients and a wide selection of dishes mixing pub classics with some interesting house specials. The service really stood out here and it was good to see the place doing a decent trade in both food and drink sales. I picked this place out due to it's proximity to the A30, as I was looking to break a long journey down to Falmouth with a lunch stop, and I was pleased to find a lovely pub which offered as much to the drinker as to the diner. The combination of good food, friendly staff and quality beer straight from the barrel won me over and I'd certainly recommend this to anyone in the area.

L-shape pub tucked away off main road. Notable for serving beers straight out of the barrel and refusing to sell draught lager, however that sampled was not in best condition despite Cask Marque and Good Beer Guide listing. The pub itself seemed a little disappointing, not making best use of space and certainly not of outside areas, the back being unkempt and the front being dominated by car parking. Could be very much better.