Okay, I'll admit that the skip and scaffolding doesn't reflect the quintessential picture postcard peak 100% English village pub experience that we found at Leather Bottle, Pleshey (2510 / 4404) , and when I say 'we', I mean not only Colin and myself, but Simon and Daddy Dewhurst, modern day BRAPA legends from the East Hertfordshire / West Essex borders. There's a beautiful pink thatched cottage opposite that I forgot to photograph, so you'll have to imagine it. But what a shock as we enter! The place is wall-to-wall Morris dancers. I still hadn't recovered from them blocking up the Banks Ale House near Margate the previous weekend. Each has a plate of Ploughman's and a glass of bitter. The drinks blackboard is brilliantly basic. An elderly couple dispense ale from a jug behind the bar, into polycarbonates. Simon asks what the beer is. This causes confusion. "Errm, Tops, Toppers, Tollesbury, no hang on, Toppesfield .... I think!" she eventually replies. As a small boy is instructed to get more custard from the afore mentioned pink cottage, we take our beers of dubious origin into the leafy garden, and enjoy. This pub is famous for once being owned by the Prodigy's late Keith Flint, though today's crowd were more Keith Flett in truth. Hanging about for a second pint to see if the Morris folk did a rousing rendition of 'Smack my Bitch Up' around the maypole was tantalisingly alluring, but pub ticking waits for no man and it was time to get out of this fantastic one-off experience.
And there was a nice little epilogue to our tale of gladness a week later, when Simon sends me a local newspaper article which reveals just how lucky we were to find the pub open at all .....
'Honour some Morris dancing commitments'. Oh how we lol'd! Only one of two days the pub had been open since April apparently. But nice for me, because as a ticker, you only tend to report on the unlucky occasions when a pub which SHOULD be open remains steadfastly closed. So nice to see evidence of fortune favouring you.
Our next tick couldn't have been much different:
Chelmsford Brew Co. Taproom, Great Baddow (2511 / 4405) keeps hours only marginally more sociable than a half shut Leather Bottle, but being 2pm on a Saturday, we're in luck, well once we find the entrance! Simon follows his modern craft beer nose and spies a small opening in an industrial estate unit lock up, the kinda place that used to do illegal ferret fighting in the 80's. It has a plush leather sofa and a rug which is a nice nod to the finest 'Spoons carpets, but where is the bar? I'm just about to clamber up some steps and disappear into a delicious vat of 'Cool Bay' never to be seen again, when a bloke appears and siphons us through into the bar, like 'how on earth did ya miss it'? Well, it makes Platform 3 in Claygate and Cleethorpes Signal Box look roomy, and the loo involves some serious contortions of the body to squeeze in (imagine doing the moves in a Kate Bush video), a struggle for me and I wouldn't say I'm a fatty quite yet. But they seem good folk here, and Simon lingers for some serious beer chatter whilst me and Daddy D return to the main area in case some local Morris men pop in to perform Hounds of Love, because at this stage, I wasn't ruling anything out.
The final pub of tonight's trio takes us to another Chelmsford suburb (or so I thought) called Galleywood. Well, I'm expecting our first sensibly located tick of the day, maybe on an actual street near houses or something.
So it is a surprise when it suddenly becomes very green, with swathes of common land, names like 'Goat Hall Lane', 'The Essex Dog Consultant', 'Dead Tickers Cove' and 'Private Road'. The road becomes a gravel track, and the SatNav turns around and admits "look lads, I'm going absolutely nowhere unless you want the pub" which thankfully, we did ......
The location and huge undulating garden are the undoubted highlights of the Horse & Groom, Galleywood (2512 / 4406) . Having said that, it is probably today's most welcoming pub staff-wise, and the bland dining interior was improved by a strong vertically striped carpet, and a quote from Winston Churchill "Most people hate the taste of beer to begin with. It is however a prejudice that many people have been able to overcome". I like that. And what's going on in the gents? The sink and bin both totally inappropriate! Yes, you need to visit just for that. Outside, with the Cockleboats bitter drinking as well as anything I'd tasted all day, a scary unit of a bloke you definitely wouldn't mess with watches a dog poo on the grass, and shouts over to the owner "you'd better be picking that up!" A rare moment of mild peril in a gentle beer garden scene.
So there we have it. One more pub with the Dewhurst's coming up next time, featuring a bit of controversy, before I start telling you about some death defying walking around Lincolnshire.
Thanks for reading, see you back here tomorrow or Wednesday.
Si
