BRAPA in .... DADDY'S DIFFICULT DAY : SOTWELL DOESN'T SIT WELL, WITTENHAM BOOTBOYS : OX PT II

Ready for a 'long read' (ugh!)? Even by my wordy standards? Best pour yourself a stiff drink. This is both a painful and satisfying day to recall.

Friday 3rd April 2026

"I'm not in a funny mood, I'm in a funny way!" Daddy BRAPA, South Oxon country road circa 12 noon

A' red dot' tick = a Good Beer Guide pub which has been in the previous five editions (or more). The working theory is that these will be the better pubs to tick off, both in terms of quality and longevity.

Didcot Parkway was the aptly grim setting for a Good Friday with none of the 'Good'.

'On paper', I was looking forward to today more than any other this holiday. Being driven to five hard-to-reach pubs, all GBG mainstays, plus a football match, with the company of Daddy BRAPA.

Dad had made a sensible eleventh hour decision to stay overnight at Bicester Premier Inn rather than heading back to York the same night. Less onerous for him, and means we could do some post-match pubs as well as pre-match. Hurray!

We'd agreed to meet at 11:30am, but a fitful first night's sleep in a new bed (ain't it always the way?) plus a spot of man-flu I'd caught from Mr Nobody as I'd seen no-one in the past five days means I was up early and decided to catch the earlier train, figuring 'Dad'll probably be massively early anyway'.

And he was! 'I know him so well' as Barbara Dickson & Elaine Page sang when he drove them around rural Herts in '83.

It became clear when I hopped into his car opposite the station that he wasn't on top form either Skin a sort of weird shade of grey, slightly morose. Says he hadn't slept great, long drive, and today had so many 'unknowns' that he couldn't relax.

So now we come to that photo at the top, and I'll show you some cake again in close-up cos I'm conscious that all this text without photos is heavier and stodgier than that lemon drizzle, my dear loyal blog reader .....

I thought I'd struck gold with a pre-noon tick to really take the pressure off our South Oxon pre-match ticking conundrum. Opens 10:30am every Friday for homemade coffee and cakes. I'd since read the bar doesn't open til 12, but my plan, I tell Dad en route, is to enquire about getting the bar open a bit earlier, even if it's say 11:30am, probably worth going even if it is under a coffee/cake pretence.

So we reach the quaint Boris Johnson dwelling village, smotheringly twee. Brave face for the photo please, Daddy BRAPA .....

Red Lion, Brightwell-cum-Sotwell is thrumming with blousy ladies, dogs, bad children, long-suffering husbands in wellies and functional gilets, all hunched over scones, chocolate cake, l.drizzle you name it. As the main lady gives me a visual guided tour of the cakes, I tell her I've been keeping abreast of it all on their Facebook page and enquire as to the beer situation. "Noooo, this is coffee. And cake. And our bar opens at 12 o'clock!" she explains with total finality and pronounced annunciation, like she's telling a toddler why playing with an electric toaster in the bath might be dangerous. There's one table free at the end. We are allowed one coffee, and one refill, from the dark filtered murk at the counter. "We're relaxed about paying, so don't worry, we can sort all that out at the end" she adds. Before I've so much as taken my first bite of lemon drizzle, she's waving a card machine under my nose! Dad thinks I should tick the pub. But I tell him Sotwell wouldn't sit well (ha ha, he doesn't laugh) without me having beer. Feeling like fish out of water, Dad asks if any other pubs might open before 12. I tell him I've seen one that says 11:30am on one source, but that source wasn't CAMRA, Google or even their own social media, so I'm not too hopeful. We decide to go anyway, here is suffocating.

One of the biggest bane's of our existence today is Dad's SatNav. Dreadfully outdated, it doesn't know half the roads have even been built! Adding an extra layer of stress and angst.

It is at this point that I ask Dad, somewhat optimistically because the experience hadn't been great, whether the cake and coffee has improved his funny mood. To which he replied with the quote at the top of this blog.

A sign then says 'ROAD CLOSED'. Just what we need! We manage to get to within a couple o' hundred yards of our (supposed) pub before the road is actually blocked, the sun has come out finally so we get out and walk. But where is it? I check my phone. 1.2 miles away!

Either more SatNav shenanigans, or I'd read out the wrong postcode to Dad? I've just checked the GBG and it is correct (of course it is, South Oxon CAMRA are THE best ..... I say this cos they follow me).

I cancel the route, direct Dad myself, and guess what, it's only bloody has been open since 11:30am!

And that would've been a rare win for us had the road closure not meant it was now 11:53am anyway. FML! Or should I say, FOL! Despite stoic beginnings, the guv'nor at the Plum Pudding, Milton (3354 / 6194 ) proves himself to be made of the right stuff. We hesitate over the bench seating cos there's a little sign saying 'reserved' but he tells us (probably with a deadpan wink) that is just so he can vet the punters and work out who is worthy of sitting there and he deems us 'the right kinda people'. Dad smiles genuinely for the first time today, a great moment. The pub is proper, the benches have 8/10 bounce, and the ale brewed just down the road in same village is perfection. There's a female 'assistant'. Wife, mother or daughter I can't decide because she has one of those faces - could be any age between 13-63. Landlord then spies my GBG. I tell him "I'd have come 'ere last year but you weren't in the last edition!". "Yes, the big beardy guy from CAMRA told me he couldn't fit us all in!" he replies, adding they've since won an award this year, so we joke whether that's because they felt guilty for last year's exclusion. It is all very jolly. Huge respect to this pub, a beacon of light in difficult times.

Was today finally settling into something more nice & normal? DON'T BE SILLY.

Rather than taking us back down the empty country lanes from whence we'd come, Mr SatNav tries to be 'helpful', taking us right through the front of Didcot Parkway station. Traffic gridlocked. "I think we should make this our last pub before the match" says Dad. I wasn't going to argue. I knew that Kassam parking paranoia was one of the highest ranking causes of Dad's mood, sorry, 'way'.

"Perhaps it'll feel a lot nicer as a 'pub' now that the coffee & cake is over?" I suggest to Dad as we walk back through the thatched chocolate box suffocation of B-c-S, wishing to remain open minded, fair and positive. "Hmmm" replies Dad with half a raised eyebrow. I know what he meant.

Drizzling with rain, not lemon this time, Red Lion, Brightwell-cum-Sotwell (3355 / 6195) could finally be ticked. In fact, this is officially my first 'red dot tick' since I dotted my GBG with them! It is even stuffier than before, nonagenarians with their faces in the nosebag and the same fussy army of blousey ladies behind the bar. "Hi again!" I cry, triumphantly and slightly pointedly, I don't mind I admitting. I order us a pint and a half of that gorgeous Oakham / Hook Norton 'collab' I'd enjoyed in Adderbury last night. Good quality, but it doesn't hit the same sweet spot today. Despite the spotty rain, we have no hesitation in sitting outside. Far more pleasant. "Is it just the way I am today or is Oxfordshire quite dysfunctional?" asks Dad in hushed tones. He ain't wrong. Today is compounded by our painful pre-match pub day last season where the Abingdon Arms at Beckley was shocking. Our day only improved when darkness fell in our fifth pub where we witnessed the 'Wolvercote Tum'. As if to prove his point, the fussy bloke on the other outdoor table has a moan when Dad goes off to the loo and doesn't 'fully' close the front door. And then on each of my two subsequent loo visits before we leave, I get the same treatment from Mrs Lemon Drizzle. Firstly, she wanders over and says 'Ah good, I was just making sure you've closed it THIS time' and when we leave, she shouts "make sure you close that door!" Obsessed. And that was the thing that most grates about this pub - beneath the veneer of posh village English quaintness, there's some serious passive aggression going on.

Of course they do ice cream for dogs, you won't visit a more ice cream for dogs pub all year

SatNav takes us directly past what would've been our third pre-match pub (Plough, Long Wittenham). On seeing its twinkly fairy lights, I extend an emotional wistful arm in the pub's direction. "Don't worry, we'll do it after the match before I check in at the Prem Inn" says Dad. He's SUCH a good lad.

After last season's debacle where we parked about an hour's walk from the ground despite it being a quiet Tuesday evening fixture, best remembered for amazing second half Ruben Selles toxicity, Dad has done his research and apparently, providing you get in with plenty of time to spare, Vue Cinema is the solution.

But when we turn onto the slip road at Sandford-on-Thames and see a bunch of cars up on the grass verge and yellow shirted Ox's walking groundwards, I suggest to Dad we do the same. This proved one of today's better manoeuvre's.

Now, I wish to make it clear that I like Oxford Utd more than most Championship clubs despite doing us NO favours last night v Wrexham, BUT...... the Kassam Stadium is the absolute WORST, or at least the location of it. Like it was built with absolutely no thought for anyone trying to get to or from it. A disasterclass in out of town football grounds.

But 20 mins later, we're in. In our seats by 14:30. Neither of us want a drink, I never go for a wee all game, so I'm in this same spot for nearly 2.5 hrs. Ugh.

Freezing wind, icy rain blowing in, they've moved the away fans down to the carpark end this season so we get the full benefit of the elements, aimed at crushing away fans spirit and stop them singing. 'Tis a good tactic in fairness, as long as they ain't expecting 5/5 on TripAdvisor. I wave at my Oxford fan BlueSky pub friend Wiggy in the opposite stand. Let the game commence.

A painful affair, we get an early lead, leave huge holes in our defence, concede a daft penalty, and quite frankly are lucky to escape with a point. Felt like a 'nice' throwback to our League Two days in some ways so I did feel 3% nostalgia, if you're looking for a positive.

I could sense a huge portion of that weight on Dad's shoulders had lifted too, and walking back to the car, apart from one hairy moment where we accidentally start walking the wrong way down the side of a dual carriageway, it is fair to say there's a lot more optimism for our evening ahead.

But Jesus had obviously decreed 'sorry Everitt's, this isn't gonna be a 'Good' Friday for you chumps'.

We retrace our route back to Long Wittenham, my second 'red dot' tick (hurrah!), I'd heard lots of good things about this one from various pubbers, so let's go!

The young landlord is taking out some recycling as we arrive, and tries to direct us through the 'main' entrance at the rear of the pub (a rural pub trend I've noticed has become more prevalent since Covid) but I explain we want a photo around the front for my blog. Which you see above. Plough, Long Wittenham (3356 / 6196) I'm excited about this one. I push through that white front door, which we later learn was supposed to be locked, and find ourselves in a square chilly front lacking handpumps, face to face with this quartet we both immediately identified as wrong 'uns. The two lads have the eyes of John Alford, the two lasses halfway between Louise Woodward and Lucy Letby. I gladly push through the next door, down an impossibly narrow corridor into this plush, beamed back room, all red and cosy. Now THIS was more like it. I'm eyeing up potential seats as Dad gets the drinks in. The landlord's Mum is very welcoming, in that slightly smothering Brightwell-cum-Sotwell way, eventually saying 'walk this way, I'll give you a tour!' which was code speak for 'I'm telling you where to sit', and plonks us back in that bland front room with the wrong 'uns. Their penchant for aggresive swearing gets them a warning to simmer down (they are obviously pissed out of their trees and looking at their eyes, think drugs might be involved too). Dad and I just want to be invisible, and pretend to search for a tiny piece of paper in his wallet with hotel check-in details(!) as the situation escalates, the landlady's mother being told to fuck off at one point. Our main man has had enough and bars them! Hurrah. The wrong 'uns think he's joking at first, but it is clear to me he ain't. The drunkest lass tries to involve us so I tell her 'it's nothing to do with us' and go back to staring at Dad's wallet! When he finally gets them off the premises (drunkest lass weirdly insists on taking her empty crisp packets), he locks the front door behind them, which is good cos they later try to get back in. We're apologised to several times and some classic but gentle dysfunctional Oxon locals are wheeled in to take their place. My Amwell Springs has a slight tang to compound the misery. 'Stay Jammy' they called it. I think fate was laughing at us at this point! More apologies and colliding in narrow corridors as we leave, spying a cute garden by the outdoor loos. "Don't worry, you can't control the type of people who come to your pub!" I tell her on the way out, quite magnanimously I thought. Because as I sit here in York writing this a few weeks after the event, our pain could've been avoided had the staff left us to our own devices to pick our seat.

What we could've won

What we suffered

Time to get Dad checked in at the Premier Inn before the evening session. SatNav doesn't know any of the roads exist around here so I use my phone and my voice to guide him.

I sit in reception and wait. He's taking his time. Wouldn't totally blame him if he locked himself in his room, lay on his bed, and said he's not coming out til morning!

He reappears at reception, sheepishly asking where his room is! Turns out the 2nd floor has TWO different lifts, and you have to get in the right one to find the right room. She'd not told him that.

Jesus wept Premier Inn Bicester! The poor lad's been through enough today without you throwing this curveball into the equation.

Time to admit two of tonight's pubs are in Northants.... "if you think about it, Bicester is practically South Northants anyway" and after nearly mowing down the most Scottish looking family in the world, we're off! SatNav has one last dicky fit somewhere near that horrid service station near Stoke Lyne. I BET the Peyton Arms wouldn't have let us down tonight, providing Mick the Hat opens.

Because (a) I'm a good son and (b) I'm painfully conscious that I've been pushing my luck today, I tell Dad that we should just focus on this next two, my third one at Twyford just over in Bucks can wait for another day.

After all, the light is starting to fade too as we cross the border and take a left at Farthinghoe, the most Northants named place in history.

'The home of good communication'. You're asking for trouble aren't you? Especially as they had to post on Facebook that their phone line was down recently. Past a dude in a suit of armour, into a homely low slung sweeping lounge, slightly clubby in feel. Greatworth Inn, Greatworth (3357 / 6197) is joint pub of the day with the Plum Pudding but these were happier circs so my winner overall. 9/10 carpet, 9/10 tropical Hook Norton guest and Dad's spied a food menu. Landlady has to ask the kitchen if they're still happy to do us something, but we get the all clear. Neither of us are hugely hungry, we go for the halloumi fries which if I stuck a pair of googly eyes on them and made them into a pub mascot, could be called Mo Halloumi. That's a Hull City joke, deal with it. Kitchen staff looks like he/she/they want to punch me in the face when he/she/they bring our food out on funny pieces of glass, but it is great stuff and Dad looks the most relaxed I've seen him so far which is great to see. There is a Bank Holiday raucousness about the joint which stops it being 'perfect', but better lively than dead. Entirely caused by a 20-strong group of village yoofs but the contrast between jolly raucous and Alford/Letby/Woodward aggressive drugged up sweariness is stark. Greatworth really had been Great. And finally a 'red dotter' where I could say 'yep, I can see why this is a GBG regular'.

That spindly leafy green thing deserves a mention too for being weirdly excellent!

Down the dark bumpy country lanes we go for our final pub, definitely feeling like I had a new lease of life at this stage. I'd like to think Dad felt the same, but you'd have to ask him.

Buzzin' to get it done by car, I'd found no walking route / public transport in my 'research' stage.

Once upon time, I suspect Great Western Arms, Aynho (3358 / 6198) was a reet thriving metropolis what with the canal and former rail links, memorabilia of which is liberally scattered about the walls. A solid 50/50 mix of old and new. Even at this late hour, there's a few too many twilds running around for my liking. Bet this place was excrutiating earlier this afternoon. Dad's spied a coffee and cake blackboard. Has the day come full circle? I enquire. Coffee fine, but the kitchen staff tell our perma-startled barmaid that the cake is all gone. Cos it seems quirky and 'cute', I get him a bag of Mini Cheddars instead. But he's quite right, they don't go with coffee and tells me to keep them for myself for a snack, and I feel sad for Dad once more! But he's soon chuckling at this funny local who has somehow managed to position himself at the most inappropriate angle, right on the edge of the bar, arse sticking out blocking anyone walking around that way. Why would anyone choose to stand there? I wonder if he's a dysfunctional Oxon pubman who has crossed the border into Northants? Dad rates his coffee 10/10, I go to admire the pub's Easter mascot, and all the twildlife disappear back to their canal barges for cocoa and a chapter of Tracy Beaker. The Old Hooky drank dreamily, and yep, a pretty positive ending to an impossible day.

Too big to fit in my bag

Perma-startled coffee wait

Dad drops me back near my Bicester centre Air B n B.

There's time for one last moment of mild-peril as he remembers his SatNav will be incapable of directing him back to the Premier Inn, but he vaguely has a modicum of bearings.

I instruct him to ring me when he's safely in his room, which he does. I eat a halloumi fry I'd wrapped up in a paper napkin, brush my pegs and go straight to sleep. Let's hope day three is easier!

Keep it pub, and a free pint for you if you read every word,

Si