The High Force Hotel, Barnard Castle

Please Note: This review is over a year old.

Pub SignMan left this review about The High Force Hotel

This large roadside pub and former coaching inn now acts as a hotel, restaurant and pub for visitors to the High Force waterfall which is a short distance away on the opposite side of the road. The pub has numerous rooms running from left to right along the length of the ground floor of the building. Entering at the far right hand side which is adjacent to the car park, you find yourself in perhaps the nicest room. Here, part of the servery can be found to the rear left, albeit with no beer on the counter, just a selection of pub snacks. The room has a nice frieze running just below the ceiling, some high shelves with old beer bottles displayed and an upright piano with a stack of board games on top, plus a few nods to the pub's tourist target market, such as a rack full of postcards. Behind is a games room, dominated by a pool table and decorated with various enamel beer advertisements. The main bar area is in the next room along and has a large servery across the full length of the back wall under a hop lined canopy. A fireplace to the right is shared with the neighbouring room and there is minimal seating here, which was handy given how busy it was getting at the bar on a Bank Holiday Monday lunchtime. Continuing to move through to the left, the next space has a little tourist shop selling snacks from a fridge and leaflets for local attractions were on display. The hotel reception could also be found here. The remaining space to the left was further subdivided to create additional seating areas with slightly less traditional décor than the bar areas, consequently appearing brighter and less like a rural pub. One wall sported some great wallpaper depicting local maps, which was a nice nod to all the walkers who presumably stop-off here. There are also a couple of old fireplaces on this side which would be essential in the winter months. We visited on a hot summer's day and were happy to take our drinks to the rear garden - a gravel yard with the old stable blocks to the rear, plenty of bench seating and little saucers with jam in the to keep the wasps away from the punters. A grassy side garden and flower strewn roadside space rounded out some good al fresco options. We stopped for a bite to eat and enjoyed some fully loaded sandwiches from the typical pub grub menu.
On the bar the ale options were Black Sheep Special Ale, Jennings Cumberland, Caledonian Flying Scotsman and Theakston Best Bitter. The ales seemed to be enjoying decent turnover, although I have to say my half of the Theakston Best seemed a bit past its prime. I wonder whether the bar can still support four handpulls outside the peak summer weeks.
This is quite a nice place to stop off if you intend to visit the waterfall and fancy a bite to eat. The place has been messed around with a fair bit and now feels very touristy and almost like a transient station-side pub, but the garden is nice enough on a warm day and the food and service is pretty good. However, there are some much better pubs not too far away, so I would stop short of suggesting it as a worthy destination in its own right.

On 21^st September 2016 - rating: 6
[User has posted 3114 recommendations about 3114 pubs]