The New Inn, Bridport

This smallish village pub has the bar to the left with humorous quotations above, a primarily drinking area to the right, and a restaurant room to the rear. There are three ale pumps which served Palmers’ Copper Ale and Best and the third had a 200 clip reversed on our recent visit. The Best cost £3.20 and was on top form (this is one of very few Palmers’ houses to make it to the Good Beer Guide). We ate here as well and were very happy with the food. The enthusiastic landlord, who advertises ‘Old fogey landlord but lovely staff’ on the board outside, is quite a character, and makes the pub feel particularly welcoming and friendly. There seemed to be more locals than tourists here on our visit, including a group of about ten locals celebrating someone’s birthday in the restaurant area. The landlord seems regularly to rearrange the furniture to suit the balance of custom, which involves taking an empty table from the restaurant area out of the back door, carrying it round the outside of the pub, and bringing it in the front door for people in the drinking area, or vice versa (I mention this both because it was quite funny to witness and as a demonstration of attention to customer needs), This pub is a very nice place to be, and I suspect that the slightly neglected small garden to the rear reflects that people prefer to be in the pub itself. As an afterthought, I also figured that this pub is probably more wheelchair-accessible than most village pubs, though users would do well to check first. Since writing the above review I have (a) discovered that this is a community pub, reopened by the locals in 2006 after being closed by the brewery, and (b) been back here for a few drinks, as of all those I’d been to locally it was the one I most wanted to revisit. Had a great time, staff and customers were very friendly - I ended up playing bar skittles with them.