BRAPA - THE WILTSHIRE COUNTDOWN PART 9 (PROMOTION HOPEFULS)
8. White Bear, Devizes
In order to understand my enormous gratitude to the White Bear for putting on a fine show, you first must consider the context - it immediately following on from my Enford / Pewsey horror show which of course, I don't like to talk about (but please read Part 1 if you haven't, I need to share the pain around). I suspect that Devizes is the only town in Wiltshire that could've restored my faith in local Good Beer Guide pubs at this point. Not that I was particularly enamoured with the exterior. That blackboard looked too colourful. And the rest looked a bit pale and insipid. But dear reader, be aware my confidence in pubs and my whole BRAPA schtick was at an all time low. Fragile. I may well have jacked in my whole thing if I'd had a failure here. The barmaid is buzzy, barfly is more so, very much a local insect, smoking man motivated, the ale is bountiful and quality, and the lady opposite me makes occasional pithy comments in a Western drawl I cannot decipher. I laugh anyway. The atmosphere screams 'unfussy'. This is what a pub should be. I'd forgotten. Then, the highlight. Previously opposite lady is standing up. Phone in hand. She is openly photographing anything that piques her interest, or moves. A rare sight for me outside of pub trips with Retired Martin, following on from Enford, such a sight couldn't have been more perfectly timed. Is the pub aware of her exploits? Of course. Is anyone remotely bothered? No. Barfly suggests the barmaid and smoking man are 'together'. To much hilarity. The Pub Child is returning from school. Barmaid rushes around and dark corner and hides, jumping out on her. "Booo! Got ya!" she laughs. The girl isn't remotely flustered. A daily routine. With my faith restored, it is time to move on. Leaving a pub smiling and shaking your head, that's what it is all about.
It is all too much for Colin
7. Beehive, Swindon
'Never judge a book by it's cover' might have been a good motto to observe at the White Bear, but this excitingly shaped pub up a hill in the backstreets of Swindon invites optimism. And with good reason. I enjoyed my entire Swindon day beyond my wildest expectations, but it really peaked here at the Beehive on a sleepy Friday afternoon. It perfectly balanced quirkiness, old skool boozer and a youthful attitude, without any of the sum of the parts being diluted. The barman is kind, the only other customer has a round open face, and had I joined him on the tableless bench opposite the bar, I have no doubt we'd have become firm friends. But with so much ahead of me and an earlier bus cancelled, I wanted to get my head down into a 27.5 minute pint at the far end with zero fuss. The sort of pub where you can just sit and 'be' , perfectly content, no distractions, although a fly wouldn't leave me along, had it been a bee, I'd have been forced to accept its presence with good grace. Colin's miffed I haven't gone for the green 'Signs of Spring' beer by Stonehenge, but as we'll soon see in, I'd already had it this holiday. There was a little epilogue to my tale of gladness, as the barman's 'duty of care' extends into the street - witnessing a drunk man with a 1/100th of a bottle of vodka shouting and swearing at the clouds. "Careful of 'im mate" he says, so I scurry quickly off up the hill, hoping the vodka will incapacitate him into not chasing me down!
6. Three Horseshoes, Bradford-upon-Avon
Made a bit of a fool of myself struggling to find the correct entrance door here at the Three Horseshoes, inviting a few sarcastic comments from the army of loud mouthed local blokes blocking the perimeter of the sweeping island bar. But I didn't care. Last pub of the day, I was rather drunk. So were they. And more importantly, it allowed me my only positive glimpse of Bradford-on-Avon. A town I thoroughly despised. The other three pubs were shite. And outside of this pub, staff and punters are either snooty or plain weird. It is the superiority complex and dishonesty that jars. File under Harrogate, Stamford , Chorlton scum Hardy. Living in a blissful state, sneering at all. Give me a shit town any day. Give me Wrexham, Swindon, Oldham, Scunny, even bloody Donny at a push - a much healthier attitude - 'yes we know we've got plenty of faults, but we're self aware, we do it with humour, we've got heart'. Anyway, rant over. A bit of filler needed here as my hazy state makes detail impossible to remember. I just remember it being like a mini-republic, I ordered that green Signs of Spring beer, had a laugh with a couple of raucous blokes, and the bar led round to a carpeted backroom with pool table where the equally green toilet walls were. No feelings of BOA constriction here.
Colin's beer of the week
5. Five Bells, Royal Wootton Bassett
Before getting stuck into Swindon on the Friday lunchtime, I decided to take short bus out to RWB to tick off this thatched cutie down a pretty side lane off the main drag. And despite a bus cancellation, and delays coming the other way, I'm glad I did. I got chatting to a lovely lady from Preston (yes, such things exist) and that raised my spirits before I even started. Talking of spirits, I step up to the bar and quite a long wait as a bloke is presented with a Scooby Doo size sandwich, which he needs to detach his jaw like a snake to dispatch, two pump clips randomly fall off. And then behind the bar, a glass just randomly smashes. "I was nowhere near it!" says barmaid. "Can confirm, I was watching" I say, still keen to establish myself as someone who'd like a pint at some stage. I add "do you have a problem with ghosts here?" which gets a chuckle. Bonus points for pubs that laugh at my lame jokes. She adds she has heard rumours of hauntings, but not since the current owners arrived 25 years ago, so lucky me! This pub has been a GBG regular since 2002, and you can see why. It is quality, but nothing seems forced or an effort. Surprisingly busy for a weekday lunchtime, you feel all RWB life is here. I sit in a front window seat. A man in a van is doing something dodgy and people are peering past me, I can see his arse crack so shield my eyes, I don't want to observe any more. The beer range includes a surprising number of Yorkshire standards. Exciting for the locals, not so much for me, but my Bristol 'Lemon Love' is a top drop.
So there we go, I'd recommend all four of those if you've not been. Join me for the final four in part 10 tomorrow or Tuesday - promotion party!
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